Ah supplements. Aka, how to create the most expensive toilet bowl of pee on a daily basis.
Once again, the joyful world of supplements is probably something you are blissfully unaware of before entering the world of the ‘trying to conceive’. I think most people probably know they need to supplement with folic acid to try and prevent conditions like spina bifida. However, did you know that there are a myriad of other things that are often recommended?
Let me go back a minute. So, when you start realising you are struggling to conceive in this interconnected world you will probably (as I did) turn to google and also the many groups on social media devoted to just this topic. And then, my friend, you have fallen down the rabbit hole.
After about a year of trying to conceive my supplement regime was so extensive that I had a special extra large pill box to keep hold of them all and was taking up to 8-10 morning and evening (different things).
Quite excitingly I was obviously taking too much vitamin B at one point as my pee turned luminous yellow… Added to this were the supplements I bought from the US (and got colleagues to bring over for me) and the extremely expensive DHEA I started taking to try and improve my egg quality which gave me horrific acne.
After about 2 years I started to get concerned that perhaps I was making things worse and not better and that the supplements were cancelling each other out or disrupting my hormones even more than the injections I was stabbing into myself during the IVF cycles. So I stopped taking anything except the folic acid.
I don’t feel any different. The outcome of the IVF treatments didn’t change.
So why on earth was I taking so many supplements in the first place and spending god knows what (no really, obscene amounts) on swallowing all these things?
Because of other people saying that they got a positive result that month and this was what they were taking / doing etc. Writing it down that seems ludicrous. Why on earth was I paying attention to what people on internet forums were saying were helping them? I found it easier to dismiss the more ‘woo woo’ things around conception beads, crystals etc, but supplements seemed perfectly acceptable. *eyeroll*
Part of my supplement regime was also due to a book that everyone recommends: ‘It starts with the egg’ – this basically gives you levels of supplements you should be taking based on your personal circumstances. Of course, I went for the ‘highest’ level to try and really kick start my system, but cutting out plastic and other things she also recommended I found too hard to do entirely.
I think this is probably why we take the supplements, wear the crystals, eat the centre of pineapples after ovulation and wear socks to bed (yes, these are both a thing, no, I didn’t do either {aside-maybe that’s why!?!}) is because suddenly – well for someone like me anyway – suddenly you have no control over your life. You can’t plan/buy/bargain your way to having a baby. Either it happens, or it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t you look for a solution no matter how spurious.
So now I have started drinking caffeine again, I’ll go to acupuncture because I like it not because its the magic solution and I’ve stopped taking ridiculous amounts of supplements that just give me very expensive pee.
Quite literally, supplement regimes take the p*ss.