Women in Wellness: Launching a business during nap times, with Lyndsey Clabby, co-founder of myMindBodyBaby Inc

I believe that people are here in order to make a bigger impact in the world — and with my book, ‘Make an Impact’, I had the chance to prove that hundreds of people are using their influence to improve other people’s lives.

As the founder of the Health Bloggers Community, my mission is to support people with growing their passion into a business — and so many women are building businesses empires all over the world.

This series is a chance to spotlight some of these women

“There are SO many areas we want to take this business, but when you try to tackle everything you end up doing nothing very well. We have learned to prioritize, prioritize, prioritize!”

Lindsey Clabby

Lyndsey Clabby is a runner (and general cardio addict!) and a slightly (or not?!) obsessive organizer for life, a marketer (BMSc, MBA) for the past 12 years, a certified fitness instructor for the past 16 years, a Patient Advocate for Fertility Matters Canada and, most importantly — proud parent to two little boys, Bronsen (2) and Sawyer (1) with her loving husband, Mike.

She and her husband struggled for years with infertility, and as a result has a passion for helping others along their (sometimes) bumpy road to motherhood. Together, with her fertility warrior comrade and business partner, Michelle Strong, they launched myMindBodyBaby, an online community to help other women get through their own infertility journeys with a little more support, control and grace than they each had.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! What is your “backstory”?

Infertility affects 1 in 6.

More women in Canada are diagnosed with infertility than Breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

My business partner and I are part of those 1 in 6 whose lives were turned upside down trying to achieve what comes so easily for others. A family.

Our amazing (ok… we’re biased!) kids came after long, heartache filled journeys. We cried, we got angry, we Googled every possible answer out there. We searched for support and a way to take back some of the control we felt like we had lost — something more to help us as we navigated the shrouded path of infertility. But apart from a few unreliable blogs, there wasn’t much out there.

My story spans three years of countless infertility clinic appointments, multiple tests and procedures, three failed rounds of IUI, two rounds of IVF, a miscarriage, and surgery for her husband before finally giving birth to their first miracle in July 2016, and then their second (surprise!) miracle in May 2018.

My business partner, Michelle, was diagnosed with unexplained infertility after 2 years of many similar tests and procedures as Lyndsey. Finally, she was able to conceive through IVF, only to painfully discover it was an ectopic pregnancy requiring life-saving emergency surgery. Finally, in September 2017 she naturally conceived her daughter Harper and is currently 12 weeks pregnant with her second.

Finding comfort during despair.

Infertility is a beast. It breaks your heart. It crushes your dreams. It ruins your carefully laid out life plans. It occupies your thoughts. It hurts — mind, body, and soul. And it eliminates the control you feel you have over your body.

Initially, we each kept our personal battles with infertility quiet, and in retrospect, it made the journey much more difficult. While awareness is slowly starting to increase, infertility is still a rather taboo topic. During my final round of IVF, I found a few people who had been on a similar journey that I could talk with and lean on, making the process a little more bearable. Later, I tried to provide the same support to Michelle as she embarked on her own journey. We both recognize the strength and comfort that we each gained from support during this time in our lives.

Passions, unite!

Prior to having her daughter, Michelle, a self-proclaimed “food nerd”, owned and operated the nutrition consulting practice Strong Nutrition. For 11 years she successfully helped others mostly with weight loss, medical referrals, and giggle-worthy poop problems.

Following my undergrad in biochemistry and then an MBA, I spent 10+ years building my career in CPG and Consumer Healthcare brand management. I have a passion for health and fitness and have been a CanFitPro certified fitness instructor for the past 15 years.

Michelle relied on her expertise in nutrition and superfood smoothies of kale and cucumber, during her struggles with infertility. I tried to boxfit my stress and anxiety away. The first thing I did after finding out I was miscarrying? Ran — hard — with tears streaming down my face.

We have combined our A-type personalities, passions, and driving desire to help others struggling with infertility to launch myMindBodyBaby.

Our Mission: Give back some control and offer the support we so desperately sought to others.

Our mission is to help other women struggling to conceive take back a little control and to have more support, guidance, and comfort than we had during our own journeys. We are providing the tools and resources that we wished we had when we were walking this road. Battling infertility requires such an intense investment — mentally, physically, emotionally and financially — and those struggling should feel confident that they are taking all of the right steps to support their physician guided medical regime.

Enter myMindBodyBaby.

myMindBodyBaby is an online community where women can find infertility support. They can gain strength from connecting with others, and feel in control of their health by accessing a number of digital tools, resources, and programs specifically designed for infertility.

Support designed around the complicated infertility schedule.

We offer both free and paid digital resources specifically designed to be incorporated into the complicated day-by-day schedule of common infertility treatments. The meal plans, exercise guides, and meditation programs have been carefully researched and designed to support women during each day of cycle monitoring, intrauterine insemination (IUI), in vitro fertilization (IVF) retrievals and fresh and frozen embryo transfers.

Science rules.

Having evidence-based information is critical to our reason for being. We want women to feel confident that they can turn to myMindBodyBaby for safe and trusted information. Therefore, we have collaborated with a number of experts (www.mymindbodybaby.com/about-us) in different fields to create our support tools. We have worked with therapists and counselors to create and refine our mental well-being tools, naturopathic doctors to review our nutritional resources and GPs and Reproductive Endocrinologists & Infertility specialists (REIs) to input into our overall programs.

This. Is. Needed.

Since launching in April 2019, we have received an overwhelming number of positive responses from both patients and the medical community.

GPs and REI specialists have repeatedly told us that these resources are desperately required. From one REI specialist, “Every single day my [infertility] patients ask what they can do in terms of exercise and nutrition to support their goal of having a baby”. While this information is needed, doctors have told us they do not have the capacity to provide this type of individual support to patients.

Our first wave of patients have had this to say:

MyMindBodyBaby came to me following a miscarriage, just as I had the courage to start treatments again. I loved the supportive language of the guides and how it helped me feel I was in control again, through daily movement and mindfulness rituals that I could easily do in a few minutes. The way the meal plans are tailored to the phase of my cycle gave me the comfort that I was giving my body what it needed. The nourishing meals are quick to whip up, help me get a wider variety of foods and cleverly planned to stretch over a few days to save you time. Thank you MMBB!

Patient has requested to remain anonymous (age 36)

This type of feedback has been so heartwarming and adds even more fuel to our fire. And fuel for these tired mamas is needed! With two under 1-year and a 2-year old between us, this business has been solely launched to date during naptimes. As our Google rep stated, “this is a business fueled by naps!” To know that the work we have put into launching this business during every minute of precious naptime (often times while concurrently pumping breast milk…) is starting to help others, gives us an overwhelming sense of accomplishment and gratitude. And this is just the beginning.

Can you share your top three “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing?

1. MOVE. It sounds simple enough, but with today’s jam-packed schedules it can be so hard to fit in daily movement. It is easy to think, “I don’t have time to get to the gym so I won’t bother working out today”, but movement doesn’t have to take place in a gym and it doesn’t have to take a big chunk of time. While uninterrupted cardio and regular muscle-building activities are important, you can easily fit in a little movement on those busy days — a ten-minute walk at lunch, goofing off with your kids before bed, lunges or squats while drying your hair, making dinner — you get the idea! And whenever you can move outside — do it. The fresh air, natural daylight — removal from your “regular” environment — can be so beneficial. Our programs specifically offer easy to incorporate movements that can be done anywhere, without any equipment — and during any type of infertility treatment. There is so much control that is lost during infertility — but being able to continue to move your body in a safe and effective way can help you to not only continue to support your health but help you to feel you’ve retained some semblance of control over your physical self.
2. STOP. The opposite of my first tweak! But we are such a go-go-go society, and our minds (and bodies!) need time to rest. As a girl who likes to tick things off her to-do list, this is a hard one for me. I need to really force myself to take quiet time. When we were in the midst of IVF I made this a priority and I found it really helped calm my mind, ease (some of my…) anxiety and improve my mental outlook. Each of our programs has mental well-being tools incorporated to help women find ways to mentally rest and refocus. We also have a number of free resources available to help people along their journeys.
3. EAT. Again, this sounds rather simple! But there are two parts to this — eating regularly and eating well. Nutrition plays such an important role in your overall health and energy. Again, in our always on the move society, it can sometimes be challenging to fit in proper meals and snacks — and then you are left hungry and shoveling the first thing you stumble across into your mouth. By then your blood sugar has likely plummeted — and those easy to find foods are often not the healthiest options. I always have healthy snacks in my car, purse, desk (when I was in an office) to ensure I was never too far from food! I try to eat every 2–3 hours, even if it’s something little — to keep my energy up and ensure I don’t get to the “starving stage.” Our meal plans offer easy to make healthy snacks and meals — many which can be made ahead and eaten throughout the week — to help ensure you always have healthy foods on hand!

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

We have launched our business solely on nap times. With two one-year-olds and a two-year-old between us Life. Is. Busy. We have done everything during those precious naptime minutes — most of our business calls have been while at least one of us was breastfeeding or pumping! But despite all of this, we do our best to make proper meals for us and our families, take some “Mommy Me-Time” to quiet our minds, and of course, fit in some exercise!

Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Taking on too much. There are SO many areas we want to take this business, but when you try to tackle everything you end up doing nothing very well. We have learned to prioritize, prioritize, prioritize! A challenge for two A-type personalities!

When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?

Infertility is such a hard journey. We want to help others facing infertility go down their road to motherhood with a little more comfort, control, and grace than we had during our own journeys. By offering researched based exercise programs, meal plans, and mental well-being tools we make it easy for women to find the support they need to help them as they work towards creating their family.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

My husband. From the beginning he has been so supportive of our business, encouraging us to pursue this opportunity and providing a sound listening board for our thoughts and ideas. Despite the fact that he kept his side of our infertility journey fairly private, he has opened up about it in order to help support our business — by sharing his side of the story.

If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?

Well, I think we are trying to start a movement! The type of support we are trying to provide has not been available to women. The fertility doctors we have spoken to acknowledge that not only is exercising, eating well and taking care of your mental well-being important when focusing on your fertility — but that women are asking for this type of help. But the medical community does not have the capacity to provide this type of support to individuals during their appointments.

“Running a business takes a LOT out of you! And you need to learn to pace yourself. It’s a marathon, not a race.”

What is your “3 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

1. Running a business will consume you! It is not like having a “normal” job, where even if you love it — you can step away from it. Running a business takes a LOT out of you! And you need to learn to pace yourself. It’s a marathon, not a race.
2. Focus. This is really more something that I need someone to remind me of daily! But focusing on our priorities is so important. There are so many things that we could do every day, but if we are focusing on the tasks that ladder up to our priorities we notice we are making progress.
3. Find your niche. Again, something I knew logically — but you can get so carried away with where your business could go, it’s easy to keep expanding who you want to reach. Find a niche and stick with it!

Do you have a “girl-crush” in this industry? If you could take one person to brunch, who would it be?

Joyous Health. She has a clear and consistent message, communicates in an authentic way and has great branding!

Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?

Well those are all very important — but Mental Health is way up there on my list. The other three can only be tackled by those who are taking care of their mental health! Mental health impacts everything and it is often neglected or ignored. There are a number of people very close to me who tried push their mental health challenges away or ignore them — but once they sought help, they found their lives were made SO much better. And not only their own lives, but the lives of their close friends and families.

You can follow Instagram Mymindbodybaby on Instagram or Facebook mymindbodybabypage

About the author:

Fab Giovanetti is a business mentor, published author, influencer-specialist, best known as the founder of the Health Bloggers Community and co-founder of the Register of Health and Wellness Influencers.

Serial start-up founder and professional troublemaker, she is obsessed with avocados and helping people making an impact in health and wellness. Sounds like you? Get daily tips on how to grow your influence via the HBC magazine.