A Soft Start: Your 90-Day Journey to Conscious Conception
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Integrative preconception guidance for couples in Utrecht
Dreaming of a child, and looking for a natural way to support your fertility? At Natural Waves in Utrecht, I guide women and couples on their path toward parenthood. Whether you’re just beginning to think about starting a family, have been trying for a while, or are in the middle of a medical trajectory like IVF or IUI: real preparation makes a difference.
During the 90-day preconception journey A Soft Start, we look beyond the biological clock. Through personal integrative preconception guidance and practical support for your hormonal rhythm for you and your partner, we build the conditions for a healthy pregnancy together. This is your permission to slow down and be well cared for in this particular phase. Over three months, the natural rhythm in which egg and sperm mature, we build a warm, gentle foundation.
Slow down. Tune in. Building the Foundations Before You Begin
Fertility support Netherlands
Private duo-guidance with gentle group support
A Soft Start is first and foremost a private journey for you and your partner. After a joint introductory session, you’ll each receive individual sessions focused on your body’s own signals, nutrition, and lifestyle.
You’ll also be part of a small, carefully selected group. Many couples find this shared space grounding and reassuring. The desire to have a child can be a quiet, sometimes lonely phase: recognition and shared experience can offer real comfort.
When you join the programme, you’ll receive the Preconception Home Kit at your door — thoughtfully chosen, toxin-free care and cleaning products, as a welcome gift.
The programme includes two masterclasses in Utrecht. These sessions offer:
- deeper knowledge of the cycle, fertility, hormones, and preparation
- joint body-mind exercises you rarely get around to alone
- space for questions and exchange
- recognition and normalisation of what you’re going through
Between sessions, check-ins keep the process moving and let us adjust where needed.
The combination of personal guidance and gentle group support gives you continuity and integration, without ever feeling impersonal or mass-produced.
Who this journey is for
A Soft Start is for couples who:
- are considering pregnancy and want to prepare consciously and carefully
- value an integrative approach alongside medical care
- are curious about the role of the nervous system and cycle awareness
- live full, demanding lives and want to slow down on purpose
- value reflection, autonomy, and informed choice
- may be part of an international or mixed-culture relationship
- are open to exploring this transition together, at their own pace
This journey asks something of you
A Soft Start is for those willing to give time and attention: to themselves, to the relationship, to the process. It asks for honesty, and a willingness to slow down, even when that’s uncomfortable.
It may not be the right fit if you’re looking for a protocol or a guarantee, or if you’d rather stay in control of every part of the process. That’s a completely understandable need, it’s just not the movement this journey asks for.
Natural Waves’ integrative approach to fertility
Maybe you’ve already tried everything, and it still feels like something’s missing. That can be true. In my view as a complementary therapist, fertility asks for a wider lens. So A Soft Start doesn’t start with a plan: it starts with listening.
Within Natural Waves, I don’t look at one piece in isolation, I look at the whole. At what your body is telling you. Because it’s in that connection that room for fertility opens up. My guidance works across five layers:
1. Your body & hormonal rhythm We support your cycle, circulation, and hormonal system, so your body can settle back into its own natural flow.
2. Your nervous system & stress levels Sustained stress has a direct effect on fertility. We help bring your body from “on” to rest and softness.
3. Your emotions & inner experience Unprocessed emotion, tension, or the urge to control can quietly shape the desire to conceive. Here, there’s room to soften and let go.
4. Your lifestyle & nutrition We listen to what your body needs in order to receive, and shape nutrition and lifestyle around that.
5. Your life stage & longing Wanting to conceive often touches something deeper. We take time to notice where you are in your life, and what actually feels true for you.
These five layers always work together — which is why guidance is shaped entirely around you: your body, your story, your pace.
Ninety days. Your own rhythm.
An egg and a sperm cell mature over roughly three months. That’s not an arbitrary number, it’s the rhythm this journey is built on. Not as a schedule, but as space.
Here’s what that space looks like:
Joint start — We begin as a couple. In an online intake, we set the tone for the months ahead: what you’re carrying, what you’re hoping for, and how guidance should be shaped around that.
Preconception Home Kit — A welcome gift at your door: carefully chosen products suited to what your bodies need in this phase.
Six sessions for the woman — In-depth, 75-minute body-oriented fertility support sessions, tuned to your cycle, pelvic area, and hormonal system. Often partly reimbursed through supplementary insurance.
Two sessions for the partner — Targeted foot-based treatments to lower stress levels and support vitality. Reimbursement is often possible here too.
Personalised nutrition & lifestyle guidance — Based on a 3-day diary, you’ll each receive your own advice. No standard lists — a direction shaped by your own biology and rhythm.
Two masterclasses in Utrecht — Three-hour interactive group sessions with like-minded couples. Depth, exchange, practice, and the quiet strength of recognition.
Guided meditations & breathing exercises — A series of audio sessions to use at home between sessions — to land, slow down, and stay in touch with what’s moving.
Ninety days of direct support — Throughout the journey, you’re welcome to reach out with questions, doubts, or just a quick moment of contact between sessions.
How fertility massage supports conception
In the individual sessions, we listen to your body: to circulation, to the energy held in the pelvic area, to where your body has braced or where it’s already open. These aren’t standard treatments. We always tune to your situation — whether you’re in an IVF process, recovering from a period of subfertility, or right at the start of your desire for a child and choosing to begin with intention.
Alongside this, we bring Eastern understanding of energy flow and cycle together with Western physiology — not as two separate systems, but as two languages that inform each other from different angles.
Read more about 1:1 fertility massage & reflexology at Natural Waves.What this conscious preconception journey brings you
A Soft Start is designed for:
- more ease in your body and mind
- more trust in your own process
- less anxiety and inner pressure
- a deeper connection with your body
- a gentler way of holding waiting and longing
Not because everything is “resolved”, but because you feel steadier in yourself.
Preconception preparation with professional guidance
You don’t have to go through this phase alone. In this programme, I offer you an open, warm environment where everything is allowed. Without judgement. Without haste. Without pressure. I walk alongside you, not ahead of you. So that you can follow your own pace and truth.
Slow Down, Listen and Grow
Before becoming pregnant, a subtle journey begins — in your body, in your heart, in your connection. A Soft Start invites you to slow down, listen and grow together, even before the first positive test. In peace, paying attention to your rhythm and that of your partner, we build a gentle foundation from which new life can be welcomed.
Sessions are offered in English. Open to international and mixed-culture couples living in the Netherlands.
Before anything can grow, it needs fertile soil.
Why A Soft Start
A Soft Start was created from years of experience supporting women around pregnancy & birth, including through complementary fertility consultations.
In these one-to-one moments, a great deal can happen: the body relaxes, the cycle comes more into balance, and a deeper connection with the body often develops.
Taking time for deep preconception preparation
At the same time, it became clear that individual sessions don’t always leave enough room for the wider knowledge around conception to be shared, or to truly land in daily life. The partner’s role also tends to stay limited in that setting, even though slowing down and attuning together can make a real difference in this transition.
Preparing for pregnancy together
Many women and couples also want to share what they’re going through with others in a similar phase — to feel seen and recognised without needing to explain. Without judgement. In a warm, held environment.
Building fertility awareness and partner connection
Out of that wish for more shared space, knowledge, and connection, A Soft Start was born as a group programme, a place where body, mind, and longing can meet. Gently. Consciously. In connection with others.
About MariseReady for A Soft Start?
Preparing well makes a real difference on the path to conception. In this journey, we work step by step toward a hormonal rhythm, rest, and a strong foundation for conception and pregnancy. This preconception journey is a personal guidance trajectory spanning several months, shaped around your situation and stage.
Indicative investment € 1500
Do you want to find out if this journey fits you?
Are you already pregnant? Read on about the pregnancy and birth journey.