I’m Sophie. I’ve spent nearly 15 years in employee wellbeing, watching companies weigh up fertility support. Then I went through it myself, and saw what we’re getting wrong.

Where I come to this from

For nearly fifteen years I’ve worked in employee health benefits, insurance and workplace wellbeing, both directly inside companies and on the consultancy side, helping employers decide what to put in front of their people.

In the last few years a pattern became impossible to ignore. Family forming and fertility support went from a niche request to one of the most asked-for benefits on the table. Look at the careers pages of the biggest tech companies and it’s right there near the top: IVF coverage, egg freezing, treatment allowances.

But nearly all of that money sits at the treatment end. Clinics, cycles, medication, procedures. Very little of it sits at the other end: nutrition, insulin, sleep, weight, stress, the everyday habits that shape whether any of the treatment works in the first place. That gap is expensive, for employers and for the people who work for them.

Then it was my turn.

I’ve been trying to conceive for four years. I have PCOS, and I’ve been overweight most of my life. My cycles were long, sometimes six weeks, unpredictable, and heavy enough that I had to plan my life around them.

I’ve seen doctor after doctor for as long as I can remember, first as a young girl trying to manage my PCOS and heavy periods, and later when we were trying to get pregnant. When it was about my periods, I had one invasive investigation after another, and never got more than “some people just struggle,” and a suggestion to go on the pill. Nothing about the food I was eating, or my environment. Just bad luck, a pat on the back, and out the door.

When it came to conceiving, I was told to lose weight and come back in six months to try IVF. My husband was tested too, with a low sperm count and only 2% morphology, so it was laid out to us that we’d probably need IVF either way.

IVF felt like hope at first. Then I saw what it costs where I live. Saving for it would take years I don’t feel I have at 36, and even then, it might not work. What nobody ever talked to us about was my insulin, or my cycle phases, or what my body actually needs in the week before ovulation versus the week before my period. Nothing about the phthalates, the processed food, the everyday products that were quietly working against us. And nobody mentioned that my husband could actually improve the quality of his sperm, which we now know is possible.

No one gave either of us real, usable advice. So we stayed stuck in the same loop, not getting pregnant, starting to look at adoption. Eventually I stopped waiting to be handed a plan and went looking for one myself. I weighed up IVF, I looked into adoption, but I also landed on something simpler: give my body six months to get into the best shape it could for fertility, redo our tests, and see where we really stood before deciding anything.

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The ah-ha moment

That kicked off months of proper research, and a run of podcasts and documentaries that seemed to find their way onto my screen at exactly the right time. “The Plastic Detox” on Netflix. Dr Yvonne Burkart on The Diary of a CEO, talking about the toxic products we’re surrounded by every day. Jessie Inchauspé, the Glucose Goddess, explaining what glucose actually does in the body and how it ties into PCOS and fertility.

For the first time, I was hearing that so much of this was in our control, that we could improve our own fertility by changing what we ate and what we surrounded ourselves with. It set us off on a complete change in how we lived: the food on our plates, the clothes we wore, the products in our home.

What I built

Out of all of that came The Fertility Protocol. It syncs food, movement, supplements and daily routine to each phase of my cycle, built for a body with PCOS and insulin resistance, and built for him too, around what he needs each day to improve his sperm quality. It isn’t only cycle syncing. It’s a commitment to getting the harmful stuff out: plastic out of the kitchen, synthetic fabrics off our backs, the everyday products that were working against us cleared out of the house. And because I have a job and ADHD, it had to be a routine that actually holds up in real life, not one that only looks good on paper.

It’s all on this site for free. The protocol is the whole method, and the monthly recipe guides are the paid version for anyone who would rather not plan it themselves.

How I decide what goes on this site

• I read the actual research where research exists, not the summary in someone’s caption, and I say plainly when the evidence is thin.
• Where something is practitioner-led rather than trial-backed, I write it as the reasoning behind the practice, not as proven fact.
• I only write about things we are actually doing. If I have not tried it, I say so.
• I update or correct pages when I learn something that changes the picture, rather than quietly leaving it.
• Anything I earn from is marked as such. The recipe guides are paid. Some product links may earn a commission, and that never changes what I recommend.

Where else to find me

I post most days as @ttcwithsophie on TikTok and @ttcwithsophie on Instagram. New writing lands on the blog and goes to the newsletter first. If you want to reach me, here is how.

If you’ve been told to just lose weight and come back in six months, you’re in the right place.