When New York City cardiologist Lara Oboler and her sister-in-law, Marjorie Jaffe Goldner, decided to develop a product that could help optimize a women’s chance of quickly and successfully becoming pregnant, it was a personal mission for both women. The two had each faced some challenges in their journey toward motherhood.
The result was PregPrep. The two women developed a kit for woman planning a pregnancy. Statistics show that even healthy, fertile women in their twenties have only a 25 percent chance per month of getting pregnant. By the time they hit 30, which is a common age for women trying to conceive, it goes down to a 15 percent chance per month. By 40, it can be less than a 5 percent chance per month. Their aim was to create a kit to help kick-start conception. They wanted to devise something that could better those chances.
“I didn’t have any serious fertility problems, but I had been trying for three or four months to get pregnant,” Oboler, now a mother of three, says. “I am a type-A person, so I started to get worried.”
Oboler had read about mucolytics (found in certain cough syrups) and the way they function to thin mucus membranes. In this case, mucolytics can aid in thinning the cervical mucus membranes so the sperm can “more freely travel to the egg,” she explains. “I decided to take cough syrup leading up to conception, but in the meantime, I made an appointment with a fertility specialist.” The big surprise came when Oboler was in the specialist’s office and the nurse announced that she was already pregnant. The doctor explained that the mucolytic action of the cough syrup had probably helped her to conceive. She soon learned that cough syrup is commonly used by fertility experts to help women increase their chances of becoming pregnant.
Jaffe Goldner had a similar experience to her sister-in-law. Now also a mother of three, she describes her attempt to try to take charge of her pregnancy and prenatal health. She wanted a doctor-formulated product that was safe and natural.
“I was trying to get pregnant and looked for products in the family planning aisle at the drug store… There were ovulation kits and pregnancy tests, but I could find nothing that had the pre-pregnancy nutrients that I needed,” she says. “Whether you’ve been trying to conceive for one month or one year, you want to feel like you like you have some control over your pregnancy journey.”
The product is a three-step program. The first step is a prenatal vitamin that contains the supplements a women should have in her system prior to pregnancy. Both women hated their prenatal vitamins.
“They are like horse pills—so large and hard to swallow, they made us feel nauseous [and constipated],” they both explain. Their kit instead offers a small, pleasant tasting vitamin, to take leading up to conception. Next, step two—the main component of the kit—is the mucolytic (to thin the cervical mucus) and an anti-oxidant to defend against free radicals. The third part of the kit is aromatherapy—an essential oil blend to help with relaxation. It can be used in the bath or shower, or for massage.
Presently sold online and in about 20 retail stores ($40), each kit contains a two-month supply. They plan to offer the product in another 100 stores throughout the Northeast by early 2014.
“Women with more serious fertility issues should absolutely seek help from a specialist. PregPrep should not be used in place of that,” Oboler cautions. “Our goal was offer a healthy start to pregnancy. We wanted a product to help prime the body with the nutrients it needs before pregnancy– and to increase the chance of conception too. We worked with several OB-GYN doctors to develop the kit, safely and effectively.”
