Speaking again at the Fertility show
I am thrilled to have been asked to speak at this years Fertility show . London Olympia on 6th Novemeber . The show was such a wonderful event last year and such an encouragement for many people . This year promises to be even bigger and better than last year and tickets will be on sale soon . See you there !
Webchat with Prima magazine 9th August
Lovely chatting today with babyexpert.com
Interview for LMFM Irish radio 16th July
Really enjoyed todays interview , though not the easiest of starts as my phone signal and all other phone signals died in the area 10 minutes before being due on air ….! I finally regained signal 1 minute before going on air .
Book launch party for Fertile thinking
July 14th saw my book launch party at the London Women’s clinic . It was a wonderful event full of experts from many fertility backgrounds , people involved in the book , family and friends and many many cupcakes !
Book launch this July
Fertile thinking , the practical guide on how to survive the emotions of Infertility is now available to pre order from amazon and will be out this July in bookshops …Very exciting !
New London Support group for Infertility
As part of my new role at the London Women’s clinic I will be setting up a new Fertility support group .
The welcome evening for this is June 28th at the clinic 113-115 Harley street 7pm – 8.30pm
All welcome , not just clinic patients .Please book your place by calling Anya on 07940589848
Subsequent meetings will be held the last Monday of every month .
Speaking at Exciting new Fertility tele-summit
I am excited to announce that I will be speaking at an amazing event in just a few weeks , the Fertility Summit . A free and outstanding resource with guest speakers from around the world to help support your fertility journey .
www.fertilityfocustelesummit.com
Book now to ensure your place
Joining the London Women’s clinic from May
I am proud to announce I will be joining the team at the London Women’s clinic on harley street from May 4th as their fertility support coordinator . I am hugely pleased at this new venture for the work and the potential to reach even more people !
Interview with the Times Saturday 20th
Just finished an interview with the Times newspaper on IVF families with twins and the stress on marital relations , out 20th March .
Radio interview 15th March
I have just finished another exciting Radio interview on the topic of IVF , really love doing these , especially the Q and A which always keeps me on my toes ..!
I have joined INUK as a Trustee
I am very proud to say I have just joined the Infertility network as one of their trustees . INUK are a wonderful organisation and offer help and support to thousands of people facing fertility issues . They were a huge help to me personally and I know to many clients of mine .
Interview in the Times health supplement
I have just helped with a Times piece on IVF and health risks , interview should be out in next few weeks ..
Presenatation at the London Womens Clinic
I will be giving two short presentations at the London womens clinic this February concerning preconception care .
Hosting a table at the VERITY conference ( PCOS support )
I will be available at the Verity conference , a must for anyone facing issues around PCOS
New book for 2010
I am hoping to have my new book on fertility coaching and self help available from June of this year . Watch this space …!
Wishing you all a prosperous Christmas and new year
love Anya
Talk at the Fertility show
Anya gave a presentation on coping techniques for Infertility at the Fertility show in Olympia Novemeber 6th approx 200 attended .
Speaking on Premier Radio
Anya spoke on Infertility and faith issues on premier radio November 2nd at 10.30 am .
Recent media coverage
RECENT MEDIA NEWS :
Anya Sizer appeared on BBC3 July 09 regarding male infertility breakthroughs
Recent interviews for an American documentary regarding Infertility support
ARTICLES:
Rising star: Anya Sizer
smallbusiness.co.uk August 6, 2009
Anya Sizer of PowerChange started her own business as an infertility coach with the last £4,000 of her savings. One year on and she is breaking even with turnover of £3,000 to £4,000.
Where did you get the idea?
Having received IVF for six years and having had two children, I realized what a huge gap there was in the market for infertility coaching support. With the IVF chapter of my life over, after the birth of my second child, I had the idea to use my experiences to provide a unique service.
What has been the hardest part of starting the business?
Self confidence. Realizing you’re not going to make a profit straight away. Because my background wasn’t in business the whole experience was a learning curve. If I could go back and start again I would make sure I had a more organized financial system and database.
What did you do before?
I was a youth worker for three years and had been training to be a councilor for a further three. Although I’d never previously thought of starting a business, when I was growing up my mum worked as a therapist from home so I suppose doing it myself was fairly natural.
How have you marketed the company?
At the beginning I did all the leafleting myself. Since then I’ve been very interested in using the media to raise my profile, having spoken on the radio, written in IVF journals and being interviewed in newspapers. I also recently spoke at the National Infertility Day, where Dr Robert Winston was one of the guests.
What’s next?
Obviously I want to see the business increase its turnover. I’m also writing a book that is due out, and further down the line I want to design courses and which can be used in other clinics and workshops.
‘Fertility Coaching’ – Can it help women conceive?
The Independent 24th June, 2008
When Anya Sizer was enduring IVF, her sessions of ‘Fertility coaching’ were a lifeline. Emma Jones reports on this new alternative therapy
Anya Sizer’s garden is scattered with toys? just the way she always wanted it. Yet there were moments when this happy scene with Hope, five, and Barney, 22 months, was a distant dream. Soon after marrying at 23, she and her husband Damion started trying for a baby. But when months went by, they decided to investigate.
The result was devastating: tests showed that Damion had azoospermia, where there is no sperm in the ejaculate. The couple were given a one in 125,000 chance of getting pregnant and told that IVF was unlikely to help. It was like someone had hit me, says Sizer. You have to suddenly face issues you never thought you’d ever have to think about.
They decided to give IVF a try anyway, and Sizer became pregnant on the first attempt. Having always dreamed of a big family, however, there was another blow when she was diagnosed as pre-menopausal and found to be producing only a limited number of eggs. They underwent another four rounds of IVF and, after two miscarriages, Sizer fell pregnant with Barney.
During her six-year struggle, Sizer explored every avenue possible that might help them conceive. It becomes like a really sick hobby, she says. All of our life was either acupuncture, eating healthily or coaching. You become so tunnel-visioned unless you really work at it. From the outside, I think people don’t understand what it’s like, how focused and one-tracked you can become.
It is an increasingly common experience among British women; with an IVF success rate of only one in four using fresh eggs, couples are looking at alternative ways to aid their fertility. The one thing Sizer felt was really beneficial was talking to a fertility coach, who focuses on the emotions and insecurities evoked by infertility and IVF.
It helps you to regain a sense of control and restore hope, Sizer explains. It’s great for people who are stuck in a pattern of behavior. It’s solution-focused, not problem-focused, so you are not looking at how awful it is you feel but how you’d like to feel. Many therapies would go to the heart of the issue, whereas coaching will say, ‘OK, that happened to you? are there ways we can make that safer, and what do you want your life to look like now?’
After research into different schools of thought, she found a coaching style based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). This technique can help to make sense of overwhelming problems by breaking them down into smaller parts. How you think about a problem can affect how you feel physically and emotionally.
Not only can CBT help couples regain a positive attitude, there is even evidence it can help them conceive. A study by researchers from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, found that CBT can aid fertility by reducing anxiety, which often inhibits ovulation.
They took 16 women who had not had a period in six months and had all been diagnosed with functional hypothalamic amenorrhoea? a condition in which the hormone that triggers ovulation has been at a very low level. Half were given CBT for 20 weeks and half were merely observed. At the end of this, six out of the eight women given CBT regained full fertility and two of them became pregnant within two months. In the eight women who didn’t, only one recovered her fertility.
For many women having fertility treatment, coaching feels like a lifeline in a sea of hopelessness. Marina Nicholas, 39, says that her experience of CBT turned her life around. She was suffering from endometriosis, and was feeling hopeless after four failed attempts at IVF. After four years of doctors telling me incredibly negative things, I had a serious bout of depression. I was surrounded by negative feedback and these are the professionals, so you believe what they say, she explains.
Through CBT I was able to change the way I looked at myself. By the eighth or ninth session, I was feeling so confident with all the positive reinforcement. I became pregnant naturally, and although I miscarried, it was the first time I looked on it as a positive turning point, as I knew I could do it.
Nicholas went on to receive one more round of IVF treatment and become the proud mother of Bruno, now four. Since then, she has written a book, Three Steps to Fertility.
Drawing on her own experiences, and her background as a BACP-accredited counselor, Sizer decided to train as a fertility coach. It is common, she says, for high-achieving women, in particular, to feel a loss of control during IVF treatment, and for these women it can be very difficult to accept that their body is letting them down. I looked at what I’d most needed and talked to people from clinics and friends who had been through infertility and the same issues came up? self-belief, self-worth, regaining a sense of hope about your life as a whole.
I help them look at alternative therapies, what family and friends they have for support. Success rates rise with that. People feel more in control, hormones start to balance and the body starts working better.
Fertility coaching is about much more than just improving the chances of conception, however. The end goal isn’t pregnancy, funnily enough; the end result is you retaining a sense of who you are, says Sizer. Pregnancy would be wonderful, and let’s really, really work towards that, but if you have pregnancy and you’ve lost who you are, there’s no point in it.
According to HFEA guidelines, everyone receiving IVF treatment should be offered counseling, but those who do usually receive only one or two sessions. Dr Jo Perkins, a chartered psychologist, did her doctoral research into the psychology of fertility. Often infertility becomes so medicalized that people don’t see it as something you need counseling for. And a lot of the counseling they receive is therapeutic support work rather than dynamic, looking forward.
Although she believes that counseling should be tailored to the individual and people will benefit from different approaches, she thinks cognitive behavioral therapy has a role to play. In my experience, it is a fantastic model for working with dysfunctional feelings. Women, especially, often find they have a sense of failure, which gives rise to unhelpful assumptions such as, ‘I’m not a real woman.’ It becomes a negative cycle and downward spiral. But if you can work with that to see they are not truths and challenge their thought process, you can change their behavior.
The overwhelming response in Dr. Perkins’ research was that couples isolated themselves and their emotions and wished they had sought support earlier.
Sheena Young, from the Infertility Network, says the psychological and emotional effects of the IVF process can become overwhelming. It affects every single part of their life. Their whole life revolves around investigations and treatments and it’s such a private thing that people tend to isolate themselves and feel they can’t turn to family and friends.
She says that you can’t underestimate how hard the treatment is to deal with, or how much you need help to cope with it. There is no greater thing that a couple can go through together. It makes or breaks a relationship. Take all the support you can get, no matter where you get it from ? it’s a very difficult journey.
The above articles have been featured in:
The Telegraph
Natural health magazine
Time Out
Essentials magazine
Independent Newspaper
