Our story
We thought we were healthy.
Sowera started with a question we asked before anything had gone wrong.
Before we started trying, curiosity led us to a doctor. We were not worried and we were not trying to fix anything. We exercised, we paid attention to what we ate, and we were probably among the fittest we had ever been. We simply went to look.
Our testing identified opportunities to support reproductive health on both sides, from food and environmental exposures to exercise and lifestyle. Ordinary parts of our lives we had never once connected to fertility.
Feeling healthy and knowing what is happening inside your body are not always the same thing.
That does not mean every couple needs the same tests. It means every couple deserves a better starting point than a guess.
We discovered this knowledge almost by chance. One of us went looking at the right moment, and everything followed from that. Nobody had told us this kind of preparation existed, and nothing in the ordinary path to parenthood pointed us toward it.
We believe every couple should be able to access it earlier and more easily. That is why Sowera exists.
Where the name comes from
Sowera is an odd word, and it holds three things at once.
- The sowing era
- The window before pregnancy, when the preparing happens. The season before the season, when small acts of preparation can begin.
- The sower
- Middle English for the one who puts the seed in the ground. Not a bystander, someone doing the work on purpose.
- To speak, to tell
- In Mwani, sowera means to tell. Which is most of what we do here.
Fatma is from Çatalhöyük, on the Konya plain in central Anatolia. It is one of the earliest farming settlements we know of. Around nine thousand years ago, people there stopped following their food around and started putting seeds in the ground on purpose. We did not set out for the name to be about where she is from. It turned out that way.
What Sowera is, and what it is not
We would rather be clear about this now than have you find out later.
What it is
- Education for the months before pregnancy, written for both partners rather than one.
- Built for wherever you are, whether you have not started trying, you are already trying, or treatment is ahead.
- Grounded in published research, with the sources named so you can check them yourself.
- Honest about what is still uncertain, including where the popular numbers are wrong.
What it is not
- Not a clinic, not a diagnosis, and not a substitute for your own doctor or fertility team.
- Not a promise about outcomes. Preparation is not a guarantee of pregnancy, and we would be cautious of anyone who sells it that way.
- Not a reason to look backwards. If you are already trying, or already in treatment, nothing here is a door that closed behind you.
- Not reviewed by a clinical advisory board, because we do not have one yet. When we do, we will say so here.
Who is building it
Sowera is Fatma and Oğuzhan, the two of us. Fatma writes and builds, and has spent the last five years making health and family content for a Turkish audience of about forty-six thousand people. Oğuzhan is the other half of the story this all came from.
The longer version of how this started is in the Journal, in the essay about the day I wanted to become a mother. It is the one with the lions in it.
The waitlist
Be first in.
The best start, on every path to pregnancy.
We are building the program now, and you will hear before anyone else when it opens. While you wait, the baseline checklist is yours, one page for the two of you.
Join the waitlist