All the things worth knowing before you start trying - Bumps along the Way PODCAST

Our founder, Dr Sarah Farrell, joined Anna Christie on Bumps Along the Way to bring trying to conceive back to basics. It is the conversation most of us never get to have first. There is a particular kind of honesty that opens this episode, and it is the reason we wanted to share it. Anna Christie, who hosts Bumps Along the Way, admits she went into trying for a baby fairly naively. No research, no real conversations, a few quiet assumptions carried in. If you have felt the same, we want to say this plainly: that is not a personal failing. It is what happens when one of the biggest decisions of your life is also one of the least prepared for, because nobody ever sat you down and explained how any of it actually works. So when Anna invited Sarah on to ask all the questions she wished she had asked two years earlier, the brief was simple. Back to basics. No jargon, no judgement, just the information that should have been on offer all along.

What "back to basics" actually is

Across the episode, Sarah and Anna worked through the questions people most often arrive at our clinic still carrying. Among them: What a "regular" cycle really is, and how much variation is still perfectly normal. How long the fertile window actually lasts, which is shorter than most of us were led to believe. How you can tell whether you are ovulating, beyond what an app is willing to promise you. Whether cycle-tracking apps are predicting ovulation or confirming it, because those are two very different things. What polycystic ovary syndrome does, and does not, mean for your chances of conceiving. And how to get through the two-week wait with your sanity reasonably intact. None of this is secret knowledge. It simply tends to reach people late, often after months of quietly wondering whether something is wrong, when a clear conversation at the start would have changed how the whole experience felt.

The number 35, and why it deserves less power than it has

One of our favourite moments is when Sarah pushes back on the cultural fixation with turning 35, drawing on a piece by Arwa Mahadawi in The Guardian about our collective obsession with the so-called fertility cliff. The honest version is this: fertility does change with age, that part is real and worth understanding, but the way the number 35 gets wielded causes far more anxiety than empowerment. It has become a deadline used to hurry women along, rather than a fact used to inform them. Thirty-five is a point on a curve, not a door that slams shut behind you. Understanding your fertility should leave you better informed, never more afraid.‍ ‍

A doctor who has lived the bumps too

What makes Sarah's voice land in this episode is that she is not speaking from the far side of a desk. She talks openly about her own PCOS diagnosis, about five pregnancies in five years, and about a complicated birth of her own. None of it is offered for sympathy. She shares it because those experiences are exactly what taught her how it feels to be on the receiving end of the advice, and how much the right information, delivered with warmth, can change a person's day.

You deserve information, not a panic and a shopping cart

Trying to conceive has become fertile ground, pardon the pun (insert eye roll here), for an industry that profits from worry. Supplements, devices, detoxes, and a great deal of conflicting advice, much of it quietly designed to make you feel you are not doing enough. We see it differently. You do not need to optimise yourself into the ground. You need accurate information, a clear sense of what is worth your attention and what is simply noise, and somewhere to ask the questions before you need the answers. That is the point of an episode like this, and it is the point of how we practise.

Have a listen

You can find All The Things I Wish I Knew About Trying on Bumps Along the Way wherever you get your podcasts, or through the link below. And if it leaves you with questions of your own, take that as a good sign. It means you are doing exactly what we wish more people felt allowed to do: asking early, and asking out loud. Listen to the episode