There are many pregnancy books on the market that concentrate on your health. Diet and exercise, so they say, can improve your hormones and rebalance your cycle.
However, the unique thing about “Trying to get pregnant” is that it concentrates on using the power of your mind to achieve your precious goal.
At first glance, you may be forgiven for being sceptical. After all, conception is a biological affair, isn’t it? However, an holistic approach to medicine supports the view that the your state of mind is vital to determining the state of your body.
Rather than sticking to the theory of mind over matter, the writer of this book seeks to equip her readers with the practical skills and exercises to change their mental state. There are meditations and mental exercises here that will enable anyone (even those who are new to such concepts) to change their thoughts. If you have had any experience of neuro-linguistic programming in a work context, this will be familiar territory.
What might be the mental bars standing in the way of getting pregnant? Peer believes that some women feel they are too fat, to stressed, or unworthy of becoming parents. By pressing the “reset” button on their sense of self-worth, Peer allows them to have a fresh approach to conception and start with a clean slate.
After a lengthy introduction, Peer takes you through different aspects of the way in which you use your mind, and the way in which you can affect your own fertility. She has a particular focus on the words you use – both externally and internally. The way you talk about your own life, according to Peer, internalises certain views about yourself. For example, if you tell people that your day was a nightmare, you will not be able to feel good about anything that happened during the last twenty-four hours.
Whilst this book does offer a fresh perspective, the writer does not seem to accept that there is any limit to what you can achieve by changing your mind set. Of course, you can make yourself more positive, or more determined, but those readers who have suffered with mental health issues may find it difficult to read that Peer believes that whether or not you get post natal depression depends on how you describe your feelings. This part of the book is at best insensitive and at worst dangerous.
However, as long as you keep this book in perspective, it will help readers to harness the power of their mind to help them in their quest to have a baby. The mental exercises are targeted with conception in mind, but the skills that you will learn from this book will have a much wider application, and may be useful in other areas of your life.