Hi, I'm Hannah

I'm a fertility coach because my body taught me how to listen.

Seven years ago I'd been "trying" for nineteen months. Three doctors had said different things; one had used the word unexplained with a small shrug. I was twenty-nine and exhausted from being told to relax.

Now I help other women find their way through that same fog — not with a protocol, but with a slow, attentive practice of listening to their cycles, their cravings, their nervous systems, and yes, occasionally, the science.

Hannah Ayele, fertility coach, in a sunny kitchen

My own story · the short version

The nineteen months that changed my work.

By month sixteen I had two color-coded spreadsheets, four supplement bottles I couldn't remember starting, and a fertility tracker that kept telling me I'd ovulated on a day I knew I hadn't. I'd stopped sleeping properly. I'd stopped enjoying meals. I cried in a Whole Foods aisle over a bag of pumpkin seeds.

The thing that finally helped wasn't a doctor or a supplement. It was a woman in Portland who taught a small Saturday workshop on fertility-awareness charting. I'd never heard of it. By cycle three of charting, I could see — clearly, on paper — that my luteal phase was eight days. Not unexplained. Specific.

"You're not broken. Your body has been telling you something specific. Let's listen."

I worked with a holistic practitioner for eleven months. We changed how I ate breakfast. We changed how I slept. She put me on a vitex protocol, briefly, and a magnesium routine, indefinitely. My luteal phase grew. My periods moved. I conceived in cycle four after starting the work.

I trained in fertility-awareness method (FAB) the next year. I added clinical herbalism. Then nutrition. Then somatic work. Seven years later, I've sat with around 340 women through some version of the journey I went through — including the ones whose journey didn't end in a baby. That work matters too.

This is why I do what I do. Not because I have a hack. Because I have a practice.

Training & credentials

Where I actually studied this.

For the question I get a lot: how did you learn this?

FABM Educator

Justisse Method · 14 months · 2018

Fertility-awareness body literacy training. Charting, hormonal interpretation, holistic reproductive health.

Clinical Herbalism

Chestnut School of Herbal Medicine · 2-year · 2019

Western herbalism with a women's-health emphasis. I prescribe simply and conservatively, always alongside food.

Nutritional Therapy

NTA · 9 months · 2020

Whole-foods, ancestral, traditional-foods nutrition framework. I'm not an RD; I work in education and lifestyle.

Somatic Experiencing

SE Trauma Institute · ongoing · 2022–

Beginning- and intermediate-level training in somatic / nervous-system work. Not a therapist; I refer out for trauma.

Six things I actually believe.

Bodies are smart, not broken.

Almost every "irregular" cycle is regular for what your body is currently working with — stress, food, sleep, history. The job is to listen first, intervene second.

ii.

Slow is faster.

The slow nervous-system work tends to outperform the urgent supplementing. Almost every woman I see needs to do less, not more.

iii.

Food before pills.

If a herb or vitamin would help, food usually does the same job better. I'm slow to add supplements and quick to remove ones that aren't earning their keep.

iv.

Charts beat apps.

Apps are guessing. Your body is telling. Three cycles of paper charting will teach you more than two years of an algorithm.

Doctors are partners, not enemies.

I work alongside OB/GYNs, REs, and naturopaths. If you need IVF, you need IVF — and the work I do can still hold you while you're in it.

vi.

A baby isn't the only good outcome.

Some women I've worked with became mothers. Some became something else — calmer, clearer, more themselves. Both are real wins. I hold both with equal care.