New, and slightly worrying research, suggests that having a healthy diet containinging plenty of fibre has a detrimental effect on your chances of having a baby. This is something women trying for a baby will be horrified to hear.

Wholemeal bread, brown pasta and brown rice when eaten in large quantities seem to effect the hormone levels of women and therefore may impact on fertility levels.  The more wholemeal food women ate, the lower the levels of vital hormones that influence the reproduction process.

The research was carried out in America, using a sample of 250 women of childbearing age, over a two year period.  They made two important discoveries when looking at the women and their fibre intake:

• Hormone levels were less in those with a high fibre diet
• There was an increase in something called anovulation (which is when a women goes through her menstrual cycle but her ovaries fail to release an egg)

Anovulation is known to occur when hormone levels drop due to anxiety, stress or extreme exercise.

This is the first time that a healthy diet has been deemed to impact on a person in a negative way.  Serious claims!

The Baby Show commissioned research into the patterns around conception for 1,000 babies, their findings were interesting, but don't concur entirely with our own information!  You can read the full article here; it produces some fun facts such as that last year 20% of conceptions were unplanned and that nearly half the respondents conceived outside of the bedroom!

Their research also suggests that April is the most popular month to conceive in, and September the least popular.  Well, we have a data sample just shy of 3,000 children (but growing daily!) which agrees that April is the most popular month, by a considerable margin.  However, trailing as the least popular month in our data is July - our data places September right in the middle as a pretty average month!

It's all a bit of fun and we're sure you will find lots more interesting things at the next Baby Show which falls on 19th - 21st February at ExCeL in London.