I’m totally fascinated with the psychology of conception and the answer to questions such as: How much does your thinking affect the intensity of your emotional journey to motherhood? Or, can your thinking make you be more or less likely to become pregnant?

Getting pregnant is a function of the unconscious mind. No matter how much you would like it to be so, you have no conscious control over the matter. One of the jobs of the unconscious mind is to run our body: monitoring a myriad of functions and making adjustments to keep our bodies functioning efficiently. But our conscious mind can have an effect on this – conscious choices on what we eat and drink, the type of exercise we take; choices about how we respond to the world around us which may increase or reduce our stress levels; our choice of belief system which support a positive or negative outlook, can all impact on the efficiency of the body.

Getting our unconscious mind to respond to our conscious will, is the knack which can create “miracles” in all areas of our life. But how?

Trying for a baby can be an emotional roller-coaster: fear; hope; disappointment; stress; jealousy; self-criticism; and a whole myriad of other emotions come into play. And these emotions will have an impact on both mind and body. Mental well-being can be affected (stress and depression) as well as physical well-being (endocrine system).

In terms of the psychology of conception – the way we respond to our fertility challenges – there are a number of elements which come into play.

Belief:
Our beliefs act as a filter for our reality: if we don’t believe something is possible, it’s very unlikely we will experience it. An example of this would be a person with a poverty belief (I’ll never be rich), who wins the lottery, but very quickly ends up broke. Someone who believes that she will get pregnant, regardless of time, medical history or any other factors, is more likely to get pregnant because her helpful belief supports a stress-free and positive state of mind and body.

Expectation:
Expecting a positive outcome is important. And a positive expectation must ignore any negative experiences from the past – the past is NOT a predictor of the future. (Of course, please feel free to project any positive experiences from the past into the future).

Congruence:
It’s very important that every atom of you is behind the belief and expectation. No BUTs are allowed! Oftentimes when we desire something big and seemingly unachievable a part of us holds back – we don’t REALLY think we can; we want to protect ourselves against disappointment; etc, etc. Every part of you needs to be heading towards the desired objective. Achieving congruence can often be a process of chipping away at any barriers that may arise, but once congruence is achieved, the sky’s the limit.

Certainty:
Once belief, expectation and congruence have reached 100%, it creates certainty. You know that feeling that something is going to happen – you don’t know how, or when, you just KNOW it will happen. Certainty is a feeling. It’s the feeling that tells you that your conscious and unconscious minds are working in harmony. The feeling of certainty that something will come into being allows you to hold onto your belief, expectation and congruence, regardless of what other people say or what seems to be true. And it helps to create a stress free situation in which there is no resistance or self-imposed pressure: it creates a state of being in a flow – a state in which all things may be possible.

Having a positive Baby Making Mindset may help you get pregnant, but it will certainly ease the suffering of your fertility journey.

I’d like to be a true friend to you.  I’ve been very conscious of the fact that I’ve posted a lot of motivational posts on my facebook page over the last few months. Nothing wrong with that, I hope you’ve enjoyed them.

But, a picture and a few words that get a like now and then, don’t necessarily change anything.  And the motivational posts are designed to change not only how you think, but also what you do.  Because the essence of change is that you DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.  The only way to get a different result, is to do something differently …

Stressed out?  Then try yoga, or a relaxation class, or change how you think about what’s stressing you out.

Depressed?  Do something to energize yourself and lift your mood – go for a walk, have lunch with a friend, go to a movie or the theatre.  Or, if you’ve been feeling very low for a long time, see your Doctor.

Isolated?  Find a support group or take up a new hobby so that you meet new people.

It’s all very easy for me to say, but it’s probably not that easy for you to do, otherwise you’d have done it by now.

But I’d like to change all that.  Because I want my motivational posts in the future to be linked to blogs that offer practical tips or activities to help you change what you do.  Or perhaps spend a bit more time digging down into the detail of the motivational quote to find out why we don’t go away and take all those actions that we know will help us to feel better.

But I need your help to make sure that I’m covering topics that are relevant to you, so any suggestions you have about the biggest challenges you face, or the changes you find most difficult to make will help me focus on what will really help you to stay sane and positive on your fertility journey.

Please post your suggestions about what topics or issues you’d like me to cover on me facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Baby-Making-Mindset/297966773668126

Or better still, join the Baby Making Mindset Club – a community of women who are supporting each other though the emotional ups and downs of their fertility journey.

Press stories about infertility often recite facts to show that waiting too long can dramatically affect a couple’s chances of getting pregnant.  And of course it’s true, nature is unrelenting – egg numbers and quality undoubtedly reduce with age. It can all seem very dispiriting and gloomy, but is it an over-hyped and skewed picture?

Individual circumstances will vary, and in general the earlier you think about having a baby the better chance you have of conceiving.  But what is the reality?

Well here are some facts that I’ve  researched about fertility:

• The number of British women over 40 who have given birth has doubled in the last 15 years.  As has the number of British women over 45 who have given birth.
• By age 40, 33% of couples have problems conceiving.  (That means 67% of couples over 40 don’t have problems conceiving).
• Humans have a 25% chance of conceiving each month and most couples achieve a pregnancy within 12-18 months.   (If you’re over 35 you should only wait 6 months before consulting a doctor).
• 10-15% of patients seeking fertility treatment have been diagnosed with unexplained infertility.
• Around 31,000 cycles of IVF are completed every year in the UK, 25% of which are done within the NHS and 75% of which are privately.
• 10,000 IVF babies are born each year in the UK and since 1978, 70,000 IVF babies have been born in the UK, and 3,000,000 worldwide.

When I did a search of “mums over 40″, I found a string on netmums.com asking how many new mums over 40 there were.  I stopped counting after 23 comments from mums aged 38 to 45.  And another string had over 1,000 posts.

And the celebrities like to get in on the act too: a bit of research unearthed the following selection of a long list of celebrity mums over 40:

• Susan Sarandon: first child born at age 43, second child at age 46.
• Geena Davis: first child born at age 46, second child at age 48..
• Jane Seymour: twins born at age 44.
• Iman: second child born at age 45
• Kelly Preston: third child born at age 48

Other celebrity mums over 40 include: Julianne Moore, Halle Berry, Tina Fey, Jennifer Connelly, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Jane Krakowski, Nicole Kidman, Marcia Cross, Celine Dion.

Of course, celebrity mums have no problem paying for treatment and it’s likely that the older the mum, the more likely the conception has been assisted (and particularly through egg donation) – I just wanted to highlight the fact that there is still hope for women over 35 who want to get pregnant.  And what you focus on grows, so I’d like to suggest that it’s more useful to focus on the positives rather than the doom and gloom, because at the very least, it’s likely to cause you to feel better.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that it’s not more difficult to get pregnant (either naturally or assisted) as you get older, but what I am saying is that bad new sells and the more sensational the press can make it the better, because they sell more copies.

And if all you hear are negative stories, then it makes your expectations and beliefs more negative.  So perhaps you may want to begin to seek out all the positive results that older women have in getting pregnant.  Get a scrap book recording all the instances of women getting pregnant and having babies against all the odds, because the more exceptions there are to the rule, the more likely you could be that exception.