None of this treats infertility. No candle affects ovulation, egg quality, implantation or anything else physiological, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something on a false premise.
What these are is an object with words on it, made for a stretch of time that is genuinely hard and that most people go through without much acknowledgement. That turns out to matter more than it sounds like it should. Trying to conceive is a monthly cycle of hope and disappointment conducted largely in private, often while everyone around you seems to be announcing pregnancies. Having one small thing in the house that names what is happening is not a treatment. It is company.
We make these ourselves rather than sourcing them, which means we chose every word on them.
This is the question people actually search, and it deserves a straight answer.
There is no evidence that burning a candle affects fertility, an IVF cycle or a pregnancy. No guideline body restricts candle use in any of those situations. If a clinic has asked you to avoid scented products before a procedure, follow the clinic, but that is usually about not wearing fragrance into a lab or theatre, not about your living room.
A few sensible points, none of them dramatic:
Soy versus paraffin. Ours are soy. Paraffin is a petroleum by-product and burning it releases more soot and particulate. The research on household candle emissions does not show harm at normal use, but soy burns cleaner, and if you are going to be particular about anything while pregnant, combustion products are a reasonable thing to be particular about.
Ventilation matters more than wax type. Any combustion in a closed room is worth airing out. Trim the wick to about a quarter of an inch before each burn; a long wick is what produces soot.
Scent in the first trimester is its own problem. Nausea makes smells intolerable in ways that are impossible to predict, and a scent you loved in month two can become unbearable in month nine of trying or week seven of pregnancy. This is the actual reason we stock an unscented version of every candle, and it is worth choosing if you are buying for someone whose nausea has started.
Essential oils are a separate question from candles. Some oils carry cautions in pregnancy, particularly in concentrated or topical use. A fragranced candle is not the same exposure as applying an oil to skin, but if you are using a diffuser as well, that is worth raising with your provider.
Anything beyond that, a specific respiratory condition, a clinic instruction, a known sensitivity, is a question for the person managing your care rather than for us.
The affirmation is the product. The scent is a preference; the words are the point. Each of ours was written for a different part of this, and choosing by situation works better than choosing by name.
Waiting is for people who have been at this a long time and are tired of being told to stay positive. Trust is for the two-week wait specifically, the fortnight where there is nothing left to do. Surrender is for the cycle where you are being told to relax and cannot. Enough is for the month that did not work, and the feeling afterwards that your body has failed at something it was supposed to do. It has not. Grow is for beginning again after a loss. Worthy is for when your sense of yourself has taken a beating. Open is for the start of a new protocol. Hope, Believe and Light are for the ordinary hard weeks in between, and Believe is the faith-inspired one if that is part of how you are getting through this.
Most people buying these are buying them for a friend, a sister or a daughter, and the honest difficulty is that they do not know what to say.
A few things worth knowing. Do not pick the one that predicts an outcome. "Grow" sent to someone mid-cycle can read as a prediction rather than a comfort. When in doubt, Hope, Light and Worthy are the safest, because none of them assumes anything about what happens next.
Unscented is the safe choice if you do not know their preferences, particularly if there is any chance of nausea.
Say something in the card, and do not fix it. The most common thing people who have been through this say afterwards is that they wanted acknowledgement rather than advice. "I know this is hard and I am thinking about you" lands considerably better than a story about someone who relaxed and it happened for them.
A candle is not the whole gesture. Sending food, or offering to be the person they can text on a bad day, is worth more than any object. This is a way of saying something, not a substitute for saying it.
We do not stock anything sold on a fear premise or a false promise, and that applies to our own products as much as to anything we recommend. These candles will not improve your chances. They are not aromatherapy in any clinical sense. They are 9oz of soy wax, a cotton wick, and a sentence we thought somebody might need to read on a bad day.
If you want the things that actually affect your odds, they are on the fertility essentials hub, and the short version is timing, folic acid, and knowing when to get evaluated rather than keep waiting.
Everything here was made and written by Mindy Motta, FNP-C, who works in women's health and spent years on the other side of this.
A candle carrying a short affirmation written for people trying to conceive, a sentence intended to be read repeatedly during a long and largely invisible process. It is a comfort object, not a supplement or a treatment. Ours are 9oz hand-poured soy, made in a range of affirmations that each speak to a different part of the journey.
Not for conception, and anyone claiming otherwise is selling something. There is reasonable evidence that infertility carries a psychological burden comparable to other serious medical diagnoses, and that structured psychological support improves distress. A candle is not that support. What small rituals appear to offer is a sense of agency during a process where almost nothing is within your control, which is a modest and real thing. Treat it as comfort, not as an intervention.
There is no evidence that burning a candle affects an IVF cycle, and no guideline restricts it. If your clinic has asked you to avoid fragrance before a retrieval or transfer, follow that. It is usually about not carrying scent into a procedure room rather than about your home. Soy wax, a trimmed wick and an aired room cover the sensible precautions.
Generally yes, with the caveat that pregnancy nausea makes scent unpredictable and a fragrance you previously liked can become intolerable. Choose soy over paraffin where you can, keep the wick trimmed, and ventilate the room. If you have asthma or another respiratory condition, raise it with your provider rather than relying on general advice.
Something that acknowledges the situation without predicting the outcome. Avoid anything implying a pregnancy is coming, avoid advice, and avoid stories about someone who relaxed and conceived. Practical help, food, or simply being reliably available on bad days, is worth more than any object. If you do send something, the card matters more than the contents.
The three that come up most often, from people who have been through it: "just relax and it will happen," which is both untrue and implies they caused this; "have you tried…", which assumes they have not already tried everything; and "at least you can always adopt," which treats a difficult separate decision as a consolation prize. Saying nothing is worse than saying something imperfect. "I know this is hard and I am thinking about you" is enough.
Choose by situation rather than by name. Trust is written for the two-week wait, Enough for the cycle that did not work, Grow for starting again after a loss, Waiting for a long journey, Open for the start of a new protocol, Surrender for when you are being told to relax and cannot. Hope, Light and Believe are the most broadly suitable and the safest choices when buying for someone else, because none of them assumes what happens next.
Most commonly as a marker for a specific moment rather than as background: lit during a scheduled injection, on the morning of a scan, during the two-week wait, or on the day a period arrives. Several people have told us they light it on the hardest day of the month specifically. There is no correct way, and it does not need to become another thing to be diligent about.
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The content on Awaiting the Stork™ is for informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult with a qualified physician or healthcare professional to address your unique health needs and circumstances.
