Trying to Conceive, Nutrition and Prenatal Vitamins with WeNatal

Listen to #WeGotGoals on AppleSpotify, below, or wherever you get your podcasts!

[Trigger warning: in this episode, we mention pregnancy loss]

Every year on my birthday, I get a reading from a psychic, she’s the High Priestess of Brooklyn. She does my tarot cards, my astrology, and tells me an outlook for the year – it’s a whole thing. 

Two years ago, she gave me a timeline of when a baby could come into my life. It was the middle of a pandemic, I had just gone through an insane medical thing – so all signs should have pointed to, “no, thank you” for me. 

However, my first reaction was, “what else are we doing?” So I went to an OBGyni, took out my IUD and bought some prenatal vitamins. 

Meanwhile, I neglected to tell my husband the plan from the cosmos and the doctor until I came home with those gigantic pills. We, of course, had a discussion, during which we realized that our timing was not aligned with the timing of the stars. 

But I come back to those prenatal vitamins, time and time again. Sitting in a giant container in my cupboard. Doctors tell us to take them before trying to conceive, and while pregnant, but why and which vitamins really matter?

Then a few months ago, I met the co-founders of WeNatal, Ronit Menashe and Vida Delrahim. They met while working at Nike and became fast friends. They bonded over the shared experience of pregnancy loss and Ronit did what a nutrition-obsessed human does. She started looking at studies and consulting with experts like Dr. Mark Hyman to try to figure out how to optimize her chances of having a successful pregnancy.

And she came to find that the sperm of it all is often left out of the nutrition equation for people trying to conceive. Often, the burden of fertility and infertility is put on the human giving birth, but that’s really only one piece. 

So here’s the lunacy: sperm regenerates around every 70-ish days, but it could as quickly as every 40 days according to new studies. That means prenatal vitamins for men can have a real impact on the quality of sperm, and quickly.

So together, the pair created a prenatal vitamin that’s meant to address this, creating vitamins for both men and women who are trying to conceive that address the very unique needs of each side of the coin.

And I want to acknowledge that all sorts of families are bringing life into the world, with two mommies, two daddies, or just one loving parent. And WeNatal serves those needs too – now we just need to get men’s prenatal vitamins into sperm banks …

It’s also important to note that as a human or a couple is trying to conceive they can do absolutely everything “right” and still need help with fertility. That’s more than OK.

Ronit, Vida and I discuss a lot of pregnancy nutrition questions I have as well as what it took to formulate these vitamins. I’m excited for you to hear this interview, no matter if you never want kids, are riding a fence, or are trying to conceive right now. 

Resources:

Podcast

About Jeana Anderson Cohen

Jeana Anderson Cohen is the founder and CEO of asweatlife.com a premiere wellness media destination that creates content and community to help womxn live better lives and achieve their goals. Before founding health-focused companies Jeana earned a degree in Journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison - and fresh out of college she worked on the '08 Obama campaign in Michigan. From there, she created and executed social media strategies for brands. aSweatLife fuses her experience in building community and her passion for wellness. You can find Jeana leading the team at aSweatLife, trying to join a book club, and walking her dog Maverick.