Astrologist Nicola Smuts Allsop Astrologist Nicola Smuts Allsop
In this day and age, there is an app for everything – but what about an app that could help couples struggling to fall pregnant know the best times for them to try to conceive by interpreting the alignment of their astrological charts?
With 17 years of practising fertility astrology behind her, renowned South African astrologist Nicola Smuts Allsop has developed just that.
An app that can isolate up to three astrologically fertile times in the year for couples struggling to conceive.
Smuts Allsop said the app, goes live on iTunes this month, coinciding with Reproductive Health Month and Pregnancy Awareness Week.
According to the Infertility Awareness Association of SA, one in six couples are battling with infertility in the country.
“The fertility journey is harrowing, you feel so out of control Some couples are perhaps not infertile, they are just having their treatments or trying at the wrong time. You can midwife couples through the stars,” Smuts Allsop said at the launch of the app at the Belmond Mount Nelson Hotel in Cape Town last week.
Around 30 percent of couples have “undiagnosed” infertility, meaning they are physically healthy but are not able to conceive, either naturally or with medical intervention.
According to Smuts Allsop, the app can be used for planning IVF dates or by those just wanting to know their fertile times. At the app]s launch couples who had consulted with Smuts Allsop and had successfully conceived described the process of infertility treatment as expensive and emotionally draining.
The couples, who had consulted Smuts Allsop before the development of the app, swore by her techniques and the astrological science behind them.
Young, in love, newly married and seemingly healthy, Jacque and Raylene de Villiers thought conceiving a baby would come naturally and quickly.
But when it didn’t happen after six months of trying in 2006, Raylene (now 37) – who is a self-confessed “type-A” personality – knew something was wrong.
When she was diagnosed with a polycystic ovary, and Jacque with a low sperm count, the odds were stacked up against them.
And after six In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) cycles and intra-lipid injections – and more than R500 000 later in fertility treatments – they thought they had tried it all and were ready to consider adoption.
“Being a scientist by profession, I had spent five years trying to find a way around this we had isolated ourselves as a couple from friends it was a very lonely time. Friends would invite us out and we wouldn’t go anywhere because we didn’t want to see children,” Raylene said.
The couple met Nicola through a donor egg programme and, after they had consulted her, she gave them the date of April 2010 to try to conceive. And, on their seventh IVF cycle, the couple conceived triplets.
The couple now have four children: three girls and a boy, who was conceived 17 months after the triplets.
Several other couples also gave emotional testimonials about their journey to fertility and the life-changing advice and guidance they received from Nicola. Now that expertise has been absorbed into app format.
Smuts Allsop explained: “It may come as a surprise to most, but astrologically there are only two or three times in a year during which fertilisation, whether natural or assisted, is optimised. There is far more to conception than just the meeting of sperm and egg. The app works with cycles and timing, which is where astrology steps in.”
All you do is download it, fill in your birth details (time, date and place), answer a few questions, and submit. Your two or three fertile periods for the next year will appear immediately.
* The app will be downloadable later this month at around R174 a download on iTunes, and on GooglePlay from next month.
