Emily Bartlett - Feed Your Fertility: Your Guide to Cultivating a Healthy Pregnancy with Chinese Medicine, Real Food, and Holistic Living

Feed your Fertility provides solid information and advice on the most fundamental strategy for increased fertility. We have developed much in the way of high technology, but the foods we eat every day are our most powerful medicine. Laura and Emily provide a path to nourishing yourself not in only body, but in mind and spirit as well.

Chris Axelrad, L.Ac., FABORM, president of the American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine

Feed Your Fertility is a wonderful and refreshing multifaceted approach towards reproductive care. From diet to stress reduction to conventional fertility treatments and Eastern methodologies, this book is a comprehensive guide for fertility care and successful, healthy pregnancies.

Eliran Mor, M.D., California Center for Reproductive Health

Feed Your Fertility is a must-read for anyone trying to conceive. It draws on traditional Chinese medicine brought right up-to-date, offering couples a simple but effective nutritional plan that works. I recommend it highly.

Jill Blakeway, M.S., L.Ac., co-author, Making Babies: A Proven 3-Month Program for Maximum Fertility

[This book] is a must for anyone who wants to optimize their success by integrating Eastern and Western medicine. It is a comprehensive resource outlining a mindbody evaluation and approach to fertility.

Kelly J. Baek, M.D., California Fertility Partners

Feed Your Fertility is really an invitation to pursue the best that life has to offer: the beauty of Earths bounty, refining and cultivating your own intuition, sharing this wisdom with your loved ones, and passing along the delicious truth to your children. Food is our medicine, and thus the holistic circle ripples and expands.

Lilakoi Moon (formerly Lisa Bonet), actress and mother

If youre caught in a quagmire of conflicting information about infertility, its causes, and its treatment, you need this book. Accessible and easy to read, its a wealth of information that addresses everything from environmental toxins, diet, and Chinese medicine to PCOS, endometriosis, and standard medical fertility treatments. Emily and Laura approach these issues with wisdom, kindness, and a firm can-do attitude that will help you conquer stress AND beat back your infertility!

Kristen Michaelis, author of Beautiful Babies: Nutrition for Fertility, Pregnancy, Breastfeeding, and Babys First Foods

Feed Your Fertility is a wonderful reminder of not only the mindbody connection, but the connection between ourselves and our environment and how they both affect our health and ability to conceive. The knowledge you will gather from this book will give you the power to cultivate a healthy lifestyle, body, and pregnancy.

Jill Latiano Howerton, executive producer of the film GMO OMG

To our children

Will, Sebastian, and Frankieand all future generations. May you enjoy a fertile world.

2015 Fair Winds Press

First published in the USA in 2015 by

Fair Winds Press, a member of

Quarto Publishing Group USA Inc.

100 Cummings Center

Suite 406-L

Beverly, MA 01915-6101

www.fairwindspress.com

Visit www.bodymindbeautyhealth.com. Its your personal guide to a happy, healthy, and extraordinary life!

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Digital edition: 978-1-62788-285-9
Softcover edition: 978-1-59233-662-3

Digital edition published in 2015

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Cover and book design by Rita Sowins / Sowins Design

Cover images courtesy of Shutterstock.com; bottom left image courtesy of the authors

The information in this book is for educational purposes only. It is not intended to replace the advice of a physician or medical practitioner. Please see your health care provider before beginning any new health program.

Your Guide to Cultivating a Healthy Pregnancy with Traditional Chinese Medicine, Real Food, and Holistic Living

Emily Bartlett, LAc & Laura Erlich, LAc

WHILE THE DECISION TO START A FAMILY can be both exciting and terrifying, it is especially so for couples who encounter challenges. At its best, making a baby can be the thrill and joy of a lifetime. At its worst, it can be a roller coaster of hope, disappointment, and unfulfilled dreams.

We wrote this book to take the chaos and confusion down a notch and put you back in the drivers seat. Is your diet nourishing you and contributing to your ability to conceive? Have you explored the unique perspectives on fertility that Chinese medicine can provide? Are you getting the most out of your medical care? Have you truly created space in your life for a new little being?

The title we chose, Feed Your Fertility, has to do with a lot more than food. We believe that, in order to truly nourish yourself in a meaningful way, all aspects of your life must be fed. That means paying attention to your relationships, your lifestyle habits, and all of the nuances that go into making you feel healthy, inside and out. In this book, we hope to provide you with tools to enhance your whole self, paving the way toward conception, a healthy pregnancy, and a thriving baby.

Taking this a leap further, in Chinese medicine, human beings (and all living beings) are viewed as a microcosm of the world in which we live. This means that we as individuals are simply tiny parts of the greater whole, and our little tiny part is a mirror image of the world around us, just on a much smaller scale.

With this in mind, we admit that this book is about more than achieving a healthy pregnancyits a call to cultivate fertility within your life and for our planet at large. Without an external healthy environment, our internal environments become essentially irrelevant, because we cannot survive without the earth upon which we live. By living consciously and choosing our food sources carefully, we take on the role of the archetypal Mother, nourishing ourselves, the health of our planet, and the viability of future generations.

As part of your fertility journey, we invite you to embrace the role of the great archetypal Mother, bestowed with the obligation to protect her children. Begin to live your life from the belief that you already are a mother and that your mothering can be applied right here and now.

Consider the possibility of letting go of the wanting and instead living through the present momenthonoring, cultivating, and activating life and fertility in every aspect of your existence. Living from this place, on both a physical and energetic level, will invite the conception of a baby into your body far more readily than existing from a state of fear, stress, and ticking clocks.

Prospective parents, its time to get healthy. Nows your chance to finally quit smoking, stop binge drinking, and stop depending on sleep medications, caffeine, and other chemicals you can do without. Start exercising, see a therapist to get over your issues with your mother-in-law, stop overworking, and start eating healthy foods from sustainable sources. Sounds simple, right?