With women putting off having families until later in life, they can often find conceiving takes longer than they planned. Don't panic. Fertility expert Zita West plugs the gap between trying for a baby and IVF with her holistic approach to procreation, writes BARBARA WALSHE.
SHE HAS worked her baby magic on celebrities such as Stella McCartney, Cate Blanchett, Kate Winslet and Davina McCall. Now, after 20 years working in the UK, fertility specialist and midwife Zita West has arrived in Ireland.
That West has made the trip here today is hardly surprising. Since setting up her Harley Street clinic in London six years ago, hardly a week has gone by when she hasn't treated at least one or two Irish couples who have travelled over to see her.
"English and Irish couples are facing exactly the same fertility issues, there just aren't as many facilities in Ireland to treat them," she says. "So they make the trip over, find out what they need to do to optimise their chances of getting pregnant and then put that into practise. I give a lot of advice on diet, stress reduction and IVF. And if IVF hasn't worked for people in Ireland, many of them come to the UK for it. I see them, review them and make referrals."
West and three of her team are holding a seminar at the Radisson hotel in Dublin city centre today for couples planning to get pregnant, those considering in vitro fertilisation (or IVF), others who have suffered miscarriages and anyone with secondary infertility.
"We'll be working out the weak links with each couple as everyone has a unique set of circumstances," she says. "Whether it's their nutrition, lifestyle, emotions, a lot of factors come into play when people are planning to get pregnant."
Along with her professional interests, West also has a long personal history with Ireland. Both her parents were Irish - her father was from Mayo and her mother from Limerick. So, although she was brought up in Coventry with her three sisters, in her youth holiday time was spent on the west coast, playing on her uncles' farm in Roonith, Co Mayo.
As well as seeing many changes in Ireland when she visits her sister and her family in Cork, there is also a difference she has noticed in Irish men. "There has definitely been a change in their attitude. Just six or seven years ago, they might have been reluctant to make changes to their diet and their lives when they came over with their partners to see me. But now they're very much part of the pregnancy process."
Which is just as well, considering the major part West insists they play in it. Although she concedes that women still drive pregnancy, buying the books, the vitamins, and doing the preparation, West lays considerable responsibility on their partners.
"Take drinking. I know it's generalising, but very often men don't drink during the week and hit the pubs hard on a Friday or Saturday night instead. Well, it takes 100 days to manufacture sperm. So if they're binge drinking, it's affecting their sperm, not now, but in four months' time. I'm always advising moderation."
West doesn't pull any punches in addressing the numerous other fertility issues. The biggest of which, she says, is not an inability to conceive but an impatience.
"We're used to controlling every area of our lives. We go to university, get a job, a car, a house, a partner, get to a certain point in our career, and suddenly we're ready, and we want a baby now. Well, it can take between 12 and 18 months for couples to fall pregnant and it's something you can't totally control. You've got to leave a few things to chance, and that stresses a lot of people out."
There's also the concept of regular sex. "Well, what is regular? If it's once a week, it's not enough. I'm finding that couples simply aren't having enough sex. It sounds ludicrous, but it's not. Men and women today are working longer hours, getting married later and women have been on the pill for 15 to 20 years, so they have very little idea about their fertility. We're trying to help them understand."
West qualified as a nurse and midwife in 1981, following her mother into the profession - though only after first working in the china department of her local Co-Op in Coventry. "I hadn't done particularly well at school and didn't want to follow in her footsteps. My parents weren't pushy, but my mother always wanted a bit more for us."
Her mother had gone to school in Newcastlewest Co Limerick, before going to Birmingham and Coventry to nurse when she was 17. Her father left school at 14 and went to work on the building sites in England. They met when he was having his appendix out in hospital. "He always said to us 'do whatever makes you happy'. And it's funny that when my mother eventually did persuade me to go into nursing, I loved it."
It was after the birth of her son Jack in 1988 that West found herself at a crossroads. Suffering severe post-natal depression, she refused conventional medicine, instead searching out alternative or complementary therapies. "They were all a bit dodgy back then, but I was so desperate that I went around to everyone, and tried everything." That was when she discovered acupuncture. Transformed by the treatment, she decided to retrain as an acupuncturist, before going on to study nutrition and counselling - services she felt were integral to planning and optimising pregnancy.
Returning to work as a midwife with the NHS in Warwick, she persuaded them to include acupuncture as part of their service, a pioneering concept at the time. "There was great demand for it because when women are pregnant, they won't take any drugs and acupuncture is really useful for soothing morning sickness, back ache, sciatica and labour pains."
Today, along with being a popular alternative treatment, acupuncture has gained significant ground in conventional medicine. In February, the University of Maryland School of Medicine published a report confirming a 65 per cent IVF success rate when conducted alongside acupuncture. This compares with an average 28 per cent success rate when IVF alone is carried out in women under the age of 35.
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s though, using acupuncture was a radical enough move to attract the interest of numerous pregnancy and parenting magazines. West was approached to contribute articles and advice on a regular basis, which generated interest from clients around the country.
By 2002, due to limited funding, she was still working as a sole practitioner on the NHS, and decided to open up her own private clinic, Zita West Clinics Ltd. "I was doing acupuncture, counselling and fertility awareness. But I realised I couldn't do everything myself."
Since then, business has boomed. West currently employs 24 people at her discreet Harley Street clinic, where framed photos of movie stars and their babies sit in her office. The services have also expanded and now include hypnotherapy, counselling, fertility awareness sessions, nutritional advice, and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), together with acupuncture.
She has also had success as an author, with four books published, including her latest which came out in March, a 10-step guide called Planning to Get Pregnant. And she continues to work in the media, as fertility expert on the Sunday Times Style magazine and regularly appearing on TV chat shows and news programmes.
West is particularly proud of the diverse and unique services her clinic offers people. "It doesn't matter if you're a celebrity or the most normal person in the world, everyone has the same fears and anxieties when it comes to pregnancy, labour and being a mother. What we do is help people plan for that, monitor their pregnancies and do our best to ensure everyone has the happiest, healthiest pregnancy and baby possible."
Ultimately, it's a business proposition she would like to export to Ireland, starting with today's fertility seminar. If it sparks people's interest, West says that she and her team will continue making trips over to see more couples, and build up a network of acupuncturists and alternative therapists with the aim of setting up clinics in the future.
And it could be coming at just the right time. With Irish infertility figures at an all-time high, IVF success rates trailing those across Europe - 26.9 per cent compared to 28.4 per cent in Britain and 36.9 per cent in Iceland - and the Sims Clinic seeing a 50 per cent increase in couples looking for IVF treatment between 2004 and 2006, at an average cost of €3,000, now seems a good time to go West.
Zita West can be contacted at 00-44-207-224-0017. See www.zitawest.com .
PREGNANT PAUSE: ONE WOMAN'S STORY:
Sarah* says hers is "the usual story". A successful solicitor from Limerick, she moved to London nine years ago, built up a good career, got married at 34 and hoped she'd get pregnant straight away. She didn't.
"I went to Zita West after six months. At 35, I just wanted things to happen and didn't want to be waiting around."
She and her husband were put on a specific diet and Sarah did acupuncture once a month to stimulate her fertility.
"A few friends from home initially raised their eyebrows at that. But it was a positive experience for me. There were other more 'out there' alternative treatments such as hypnosis available, but I didn't go for them."
Sarah believes West plugs a gap in the medical system - the stage between finding it difficult to get pregnant and trying IVF. "People will often rush you down the expensive IVF route before you even know if you need it."
Although IVF was the route she did eventually take, it was only after thoroughly investigating everything else. "My partner's sperm was found to be sub-optimal. But after a few weeks on the nutritional diet, cutting down on alcohol, smoking and caffeine, it had improved significantly."
Sarah now has a healthy six-week-old baby boy. "I'm very lucky. Within 15 months of seeing Zita, I had given birth. I know it can take longer for others." In fact, it's been such a good experience that Sarah has recommended West to numerous friends. "I've sent loads of people to her, including many friends from Ireland coming to the UK for fertility treatment.
"My mother works at a hospital in Ireland and sees a lot of women my age trying to conceive, and not knowing where to go next. Zita has access to all the top people. If there's anything that needs to be looked at by someone else, she will get you seen by them, and fast."
*Name has been changed