Most fertility conversations start with the woman. Ronit Menashe and Vida Delrahim started with a different question: What if we've been looking at half the picture this whole time?

Both co-founders of WeNatal came to this work the hard way — through their own miscarriages, through the silence that followed, and through a shared refusal to accept that nothing could be done. What they built together isn't just a supplement company. It's a reframe of how we think about conception, loss, and what preparation actually looks like for both partners.

This conversation with Rachel covers the science, the grief, and the practical steps that most people don't hear until it's already too late.

Ronit Menashe and Vida Delrahim — co-founders of WeNatal, a fertility wellness company designed for both partners.

Vida spent nearly 20 years running global events at Nike with what she describes as "impeccable precision" and applied almost none of that same rigor to her own health until two miscarriages forced a different conversation.

Ronit brought a functional medicine lens to the partnership, having already worked alongside Dr. Mark Hyman before their losses aligned their paths toward WeNatal.

They met nearly 20 years ago at Nike, where they climbed the corporate ladder together before their personal experiences pointed them toward an entirely different mission. WeNatal offers prenatals, a protein powder prenatal, and postpartum support designed for both partners, not just women. You can find their free preconception guide at https://wenatal.com/

To follow them → Instagram: @we_natal

✦ Men contribute to 50% of pregnancy health and pregnancy loss — and almost nobody says that out loud. Ronit called her husband the moment she learned this, because no prenatal for men existed yet. What followed was three months of both couples cleaning up their diets, leveling up nutrients, and committing to what they now call Trimester Zero. Three months later, Ronit got pregnant on the first try. She gave birth four days after her 42nd birthday.

✦ Trimester Zero may be the most important trimester nobody prepares for. The three months before conception matter more than most people realize — for both partners. Men regenerate sperm through a process called spermatogenesis, meaning the sperm quality today reflects inputs from the past three months. Women can't create new eggs, but they can impact how existing eggs mature. The window exists. Most people just don't know to use it.

✦ The "you're too old" narrative is doing real damage — and the science doesn't fully back it up. Ronit was told at 41 that her miscarriage was just her age, nothing she could do. Around that time, she tested her biological age and it came back at 30-31. One thing worth sitting with: the label "geriatric pregnancy" at 35 may be a data point, but it isn't a verdict.

✦ Stress isn't just emotional — it has a direct physiological impact on fertility. Vida put it plainly: you can check every box in their guide — clean air, clean water, no plastics, clean beauty — but if your whole physiology is in fight-or-flight mode, your body cannot prioritize conception. It will literally redirect blood and nutrients to your limbs as if you are being chased by something. Gratitude, in WeNatal's framing, isn't a wellness platitude. It's a muscle with measurable impact on your nervous system.

✦ Community breaks the silence that makes this harder than it needs to be. When Vida had her first miscarriage, she told people — and found out her own mother had miscarriages she had never mentioned. Co-workers she sat next to every day had been through it too. The more she shared, the less alone she felt. WeNatal was built on that same instinct: community over isolation, empowerment over fear.

I love that Ronit and Vida named something most people in this space never address: men's health is just as important to fertility as women's health. There's always so much pressure on women to eat the right things, take the right supplements, do everything perfectly, but it's very much an equal partnership where men play their own distinct role. For anyone trying to conceive or thinking about it in the future, this conversation might be for you as they share tips on how they talked about it with their own partners.

Where in your life are you carrying the pressure to “do it perfectly” by yourself? What do you think would change if you treated whatever this is as a shared effort (with a partner, friend, mentor, community, or even your future self) instead of something to carry on your own.

If this conversation resonated, the full episode is on Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Subscribe to the You Are Here newsletter so you don't miss what's coming next and if you know someone navigating fertility, pregnancy loss, or preconception prep, this is worth forwarding.