Our story

Our story

I'm Belinda, I trained as a doctor and spent years trying to become a mother.

My husband Chris and I did 6 rounds of IVF before having two daughters.

If you're here, reading this, you probably already know how exhausting and isolating this journey can feel.

This is the story of what changed - and how we hope Fertility Hero can help you.

The beginning

Chris and I started trying for a baby just over 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/sperm testing and scans, all of which were normal. We were diagnosed with unexplained infertility.

Time moved on, lots of our friends had two children already 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 proceed to IVF. I was heartbroken as I had always hoped it would work naturally but I was so desperate for it to finally happen, terrified that it might not and exhausted by the constant cycle of hope and failure. When we eventually started IVF, it was a kind of relief.

"Lots of our friends had two children already. I still hadn't seen a shadow on a pregnancy test."

Three rounds, and a turning point

We did three rounds of IVF in London: one NHS-funded, two private. Each time, we lost most of our embryos between fertilisation and transfer. On collection day, we'd start with a good number. We’d still have most on day 3. But by transfer day, we'd have only one or two left, suboptimal, and nothing to freeze. Two negative tests. One early loss.

After three failed cycles, something shifted in me. I stopped deferring to everyone else and started doing my own research. I have a medical degree and was working as a doctor in hospital so I'm used to evaluating data and weighing options but this wasn't academic any more. This was existential. Looking at the possibility of a future without children brought my priorities into sharp focus. Everything was secondary to the desire to get pregnant and have a baby. I became obsessed: scientific papers, books, podcasts, clinical data. I wanted to understand why this was happening to us and I wanted to know that I had left no stone unturned.

We switched to a clinic in the US with world-leading IVF success rates. And one of the first things they did was hand us a list of supplements. This was in stark contrast to our other two clinics where supplements were not mentioned proactively and were dismissed when we asked for guidance. I researched the list and found there was good evidence for the recommendations. It was so frustrating to have done 3 rounds of IVF without knowing about simple things we could have done to better prepare ourselves.

We flew to the US for a day of tests in November 2019 and made a plan to return for an egg collection in March 2020.

By then, COVID was dominating the news. The day I boarded a practically empty flight to the US, the pandemic was declared.

Our plan had been that Chris would finish up his work commitments and fly over in time for egg collection. This plan now looked in doubt. I was worried that I’d flown there alone and injected lots of expensive medication for nothing.

Amazingly, Chris made it on one of the last flights and despite snowstorms and the clinic’s increasingly stringent COVID regulations and a flat tyre, we managed to complete the cycle.

We had always planned that we would return to the UK after egg collection to allow any embryos to be biopsied for PGT-A. We came home to a country in lockdown.

A few days later, we heard from the clinic that there were 5 good quality blastocysts. This was incredible news given our previous results.

"The clinic in the US actively encouraged us to take a specific protocol, including high-dose CoQ10, for three months before starting. Our previous doctors hadn't mentioned it."

What changed

Three months is the window that matters. It's the approximate time it takes eggs to mature and sperm to develop, which is why what you do in the lead-up to a cycle matters so much more than most people realise. We followed the protocol carefully.

On that cycle, our embryo attrition rate dropped dramatically. The PGT-A revealed that only one was chromosomally normal. We had hoped for more but this was still great news: a normal embryo has roughly a 70% chance of becoming a baby. After all the past failure, this felt like a huge turning point. We could make normal embryos, we were on the right track, we just needed to keep going.

The pandemic meant we couldn't travel back to the US for another egg collection or for transfer, so we found a clinic in London and repeated the protocol. This time, we made two normal embryos. Following a frozen embryo transfer, our first daughter was born.

A few years later, after losing a pregnancy from our remaining London frozen embryo, we did a sixth round. Eight years had passed since we first started trying for a baby. I wasn't sure if a second baby would be possible.

Incredibly, we made two more normal embryos. Our second daughter was born in 2024.

3 rounds before the supplement protocol. 3 rounds after.

The difference was striking. We changed other things too but we believe supplements were key to our success. We've recommended them to so many other people we know, and many of them have gone on to have a baby.

Why Fertility Hero exists

I wish that someone had told me sooner, not just what to take, but why it matters. What forms to look for, and how to put it together so that I didn't spend hours trawling forums and checking doses and ingredients on multiple different online stores.

Because that's what I did. I used to order from multiple outlets, check every label for industrial oils and synthetic fillers, and I spent every Sunday evening making up pill boxes for both of us. The doses we needed were higher than anything available in a single combined supplement. And finding clean formulations with the correct doses was genuinely time-consuming. Of course, I'd do it all again in a heartbeat - but what if it could be easier?

I built Fertility Hero because the evidence exists. The right supplements, in the right forms and doses, are not a secret. They just weren't easy to access. I wanted to change that, not just for the people we know, but for anyone going through this.

After everything we went through, and how long it took, we began to believe that it would never be possible to have a child, let alone two. It was the most difficult and lonely part of my life which is why I want to share everything I've learnt with you.

You don't have to figure it out alone. Start here.

Dr Belinda Adams Founder, Fertility Hero
Doctor, 6 rounds of IVF, mum of two

"I don't want you to spend years figuring it out the way I did."

Built for you, based on our experience So you don't have to figure it out alone.
Evidence-led, not label-led Every ingredient chosen for what the research actually shows, not token amounts to tick a box.
Clean formulations, no shortcuts No magnesium stearate, no industrial oils, no synthetic fillers. Nothing we wouldn't take ourselves.