Our story

Chris and I started trying for a baby ten years ago, when I was working as a junior doctor in a London hospital. We were relaxed about the timeframe at first but after a year of trying, our GP referred us for blood and sperm testing and scans, all of which were normal. We were diagnosed with unexplained infertility. 

Time moved on, lots of our friends had babies and I'd still not seen a shadow on a pregnancy test. After two years we tried two rounds of stimulated IUI - still nothing. After three years, we decided to go to an IVF clinic. I was heartbroken as I had always hoped it would eventually work naturally but I felt like we had no other option as time was passing and I knew IVF success was more likely the sooner we started. 

We did three rounds in London, one NHS-funded and two at a private clinic. Each time, we experienced a high rate of embryo attrition in between fertilisation and transfer. When transfer day came around each time, we had 1-2 suboptimal embryos put back and none left to freeze. The first two rounds, my pregnancy test was negative. On the third round we got a positive but it was short-lived. 

Three IVF failures was a wake up call. I was more determined than ever to throw everything at having a baby. I didn't care how much debt we incurred, how many ways we had to deprive ourselves in the short term - I just wanted us to be a family. Up until this point, I'd been happy to let our clinicians drive all the decisions - I have a medical degree but I'd never worked in fertility. But after three failed cycles and not knowing which way to turn, I became obsessed with trying to work out what was causing our infertility and how we could address it: consuming scientific papers, books, podcasts and researching the best clinics. 

After switching to a US clinic, we overhauled our supplement regime. I'd asked our previous doctors about supplements and they weren't particularly encouraging. At the clinic in the US, which has world-leading IVF success rates, we were positively encouraged to take a list of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants including high-dose ubiquinone and acai berry extract for three months prior to our cycle. Three months is the key period for men and women as this is the approximate length of time that it takes eggs to mature and sperm to be generated. On this cycle our embryo attrition rate went right down. We made five good quality blastocysts (a day 5/6 embyro). We opted to do PGT-A (which we hadn't done on previous cycles), and only one embryo was normal. This was still great news, as a normal embryo has a ~70% chance of becoming a baby but there was still room for failure. 

Due to US travel restrictions during the pandemic, we were unable to get back to the US to do more IVF or have the embryo transferred. We found a different clinic in London and repeated the protocol from the US, again taking our daily cocktail of supplements. This time, the result was even better, we created two normal embryos which gave us our first daughter. Then in 2024, the remaining London embryo was transferred and although I initially got a positive pregnancy test, sadly that pregnancy was lost. We ended up back at the IVF clinic for our 6th round of IVF. Again, we prepped religiously including following our supplement regime for 3 months prior. I was three years older than the previous round - 8 years had passed since we first started trying. I was so scared that during that time, my egg number and quality would have diminished further and a second baby might not be possible. But amazingly, we again created two normal embryos and our second daughter was born. 

Having done 3 rounds of IVF before "the list" and 3 rounds after, my husband and I saw a real difference. We changed other things too, of course, but we count supplements as one of the key pillars of our eventual success. I wish I had known what to take earlier in our journey as it might have saved us time, money and distress. We recommend supplements to everyone we meet who is going through fertility troubles and so many of them have eventually succeeded in their wish to become parents. 

That being said, the list of items was quite long and this generated a significant amount of admin for me. I used to spend Sunday evenings shopping from multiple online outlets to replenish our stock with the correct doses and then making up weekly pill boxes for us both. The doses of antioxidants were much higher than you find in existing combined fertility supplements. There were so many capsules and tablets to swallow that we used to feel quite sick afterwards. It was also hard to find everything we needed in a formulation that we were happy to take. For example, it can be quite tricky to find ubiquinone that isn't combined with industrial oils. I avoid those oils in food and when cooking, so why would I want them in my supplements?

That's where the idea for Fertility Hero came from: we want to take the hassle and uncertainty out of deciding what supplements you might want to take. We have done the research to develop clean formulations with no junk fillers and other nasty ingredients, in a format that's easy and pleasant to take. We want to provide the kind of support that we needed so other people don't go through it alone.