HypnoFertility ®

One in seven UK couples has difficulty conceiving, according to The Human Fertilisation And Embryology Authority. If you've received a diagnosis of 'unexplained infertility' (also known as psychogenic infertility) after undergoing medical tests, you may be feeling frustrated, stressed and anxious about your inability to become pregnant. However, you should in fact be seeing this as good news: it means there's no physical reason stopping you from becoming parents. This diagnosis is medical proof that you are not infertile, and that you can indeed have a child.

Stress can have a detrimental effect on conception in a number of ways. It can delay the release of eggs and prevent the implantation of the fertilised egg. And by triggering the fight, flight or freeze response, it can direct blood away from your uterus and instead send it to your limbs and the organs that your body perceives as being essential for survival.

Hypnotherapy utilises a variety of different techniques, from relaxation and anxiety-reduction, through to helping you discover the fears and doubts that may be unconsciously preventing conception. After undergoing hypnotherapy, many women report feeling that they've 'got their life back' and go on to conceive easily and quickly because they're no longer stressed.

Recent research has shown that hypnotherapy is a very effective aid not only to natural conception, but when used in conjunction with IVF. A recent Israeli study of 185 women showed that the success rate of IVF treatments doubled from 14% to 28% when the subjects underwent hypnosis during implantation.

A minimum of four hypnotherapy sessions is usually required. In the first 90-minute session, both partners' medical and fertility histories will be taken, and past experiences and beliefs will be discussed. The subsequent hour-long sessions utilise a variety of hypnotherapeutic techniques tailored to each individual case and may involve referral to an acupuncturist.

I am a Certified HypnoBirthing® Fertility Therapist and I trained under Board Certified Hypnotherapist Lynsi Eastburn, the US-based creator of the HypnoBirthing® Fertility programme and author of It's Conceivable! (Trafford Publishing).

To watch a YouTube interview with Lynsi Eastburn, click here.

THE EVIDENCE?
A study published in 1999 in the Journal Of The American Medical Women's Association showed that 42% of 132 women experiencing difficulty becoming pregnant conceived within six months of completing a mind/body programme.

In a study published in 2000 in the journal Fertility & Sterility, and reported in The Times, 55% of the previously infertile women who used mind/body techniques conceived, compared with 20% of the control group who didn't use these techniques.

In another study, published in 2006 in Fertility & Sterility, and reported in The Daily Telegraph, it was shown that nearly 60% of a group of Israeli women who were hypnotised before and during the transfer of an embryo created by IVF became pregnant, whereas only 30% of the group of women who weren't hypnotised became pregnant. The researchers reported that many infertility experts see the transfer of an embryo to a woman's uterus as a key event that determines whether IVF will succeed, and that women may be stressed during embryo transfer from fears that the treatment will fail, or that the transfer will be painful. The researchers hypothesised that the hypnosis helped the women's uteruses to remain relaxed, allowing the embryos to implant more easily. They also said that it's possible that the hypnosis produced changes in immune or hormonal uterine function resulting in an improvement in the interaction between the blastocyst (which develops into the embryo) and the lining of the uterus.

To go back to the What Hypnosis Can Help page, click here.