Your early adult years are spent avoiding pregnancy but once you ’re settled and ready for a baby, you will want it to happen, and happen soon.
Parenting on Female First
Here are a few tips that may help it happen sooner rather than later.
You Visit Your GP
It’s not that you don't know how to make a baby, but if you and your partner are ready to start a family, checking in with your GP before you start trying can be a good idea.
During this visit, you'll get a chance to check out your medical history and discuss any possible issues that might come up during pregnancy due to past or current medical conditions.
Extra tip bring a list of all current medications, in case any may have a negative impact on your fertility or a pregnancy.
Your GP will also likely do a complete gynaecological exam, blood tests, tests for STI's, tests for rubella immunity. If you ’re not immune from rubella, get vaccinated and use a reliable birth control for the following 3 months before getting pregnant). Your GP will most likely recommend taking a prenatal vitamin with folic acid.
ExtraTip: if your GP doesn't suggest it see a dentist as well, to make sure their oral health is good as well as late miscarriage has been linked to maternal periodontal (gum) disease.
You Get Off Birth Control Early
This may seem pretty obvious, but some forms of birth control reduce your fertility even after you discontinue use.
The Pill: Your fertility normally returns almost immediately, as the effects of hormones in birth control pills aren’t long-lasting. The same menstrual cycle you had before going on the Pill is likely to resume. If you were a regular 28-cycle that should return, if you had irregular cycles, it’s likely that you'll return to irregular cycles. The same principles apply to the birth control patch.
IUD: Whether you have the hormonal or non-hormonal version of an intrauterine device (IUD), your fertility should return right away once you have the device removed by your clinic.
Depo-Provera: The effects of Depo-Provera are longer lasting, though you need to get the shot every 3 months to ensure protection against pregnancy because theoretically, it’s wearing off in reality you may take much longer to return to fertility. If you ’re planning to get pregnant in the following year, stop getting the shots, as there is no medication to counter its effects.”
If you want to go off of a hormonal form of birth control but you ’re not quite ready to get pregnant yet, be sure to use a barrier form of birth control like condoms.
You Determine When You Ovulate
Sex education at school will told you an egg can only survive for 12 to 24 hours after ovulation, while sperm can survive up to 72 hours after ejaculation. This means the window of opportunity for baby making is pretty tight.
To up your chances of timing things properly, you need to know when you ovulate. You might have a vague notion that ovulation happens around day 14 of your menstrual cycle (counting the first day of your period as day 1), this is the case only for women with a regular 28-day cycle, which is the minority of women. Most of us fall somewhere in the 24- to 35-day range. What is true is ovulation usually occurs about 14 days before the last day of a woman’s menstrual cycle, or the day before she gets her period. So, for a woman with a 24-day cycle, ovulation is likely around day 10, while a woman with a 35-day cycle ovulation is around day 21.
If you ’re not sure how long your menstrual cycle is or when you ovulate, try to keep track on a calendar of when you get your period and how long it lasts, to get a better sense of when you ’re most likely ovulating.
Ovulation Predictor Kit
OPKs help to give you a heads up that you ‚re about to ovulate, which is a signal that you and your partner should schedule some immediate bedroom activity. They work by detecting a surge of luteinizing hormone (LH) in your urine, this usually occurs about 24 to 36 hours before you ovulate.
Kit instructions recommend testing at the same time each day, but it's usually best with the second pee of the day, this is because the hormone build starts around 3 am, so there's not enough of it in your first pee of the morning to be detected. To operate pee on a test stick, wait for the results to appear. Depending on the kind of test, it may show a second line (the first is a control line to show you the test is working properly), or a symbol like a smiley face to indicate that it's go-time.
If you can try to use an OPK in conjunction with another method of determining when you ovulate, like charting your BBT, so that you'll have a better sense of when to use the OPK, because they usually come with a limited number of test strips, which means you need to have a good sense of when to start testing during your menstrual cycle. If you ’re sure of when you ovulate, then head straight for the OPK.
Chart Your Basal Body Temperature
To determine when you ovulate chart your basal body temperature (BBT). To do so, you'll need a basal thermometer, which shows tenths of degrees. Take your temperature every morning immediately upon waking - before even getting out of bed to pee. Your temperature usually drops subtly the day you ovulate; then it rises the following day and stays elevated until you get your period and throughout your pregnancy, should you conceive that month.
Charting your BBT won’t be much use month one, as you'll only know after you have ovulated from the temperature spike, but charting your BBT for a few months in a row can help you determine patterns in your menstrual cycle better predicting when you will ovulate next time, so you and your partner should get down and dirty.
Remember basal body temperature can be thrown off by a number of factors, including illness. If you don’t remember take it first thing, it's not going to be accurate. Bonus, charting your BBT can help to confirm that any fertilised eggs would have time to implant. If your luteal phase - the time between ovulation and your next period, during which your BBT should be slightly elevated - is shorter than 11 days, that may mean that any potential pregnancy could have difficulty “sticking,”.
Cervical Mucus
There’s a more personal way to predicting ovulation - your vaginal secretions, and it won’t cost you anything more than a minute of your time. However, this method’s not for those with bodily fluid issues.
Following your period, you won’t have much of a vaginal discharge for several days. Then, a sticky, cloudy-looking mucus will appear before it changes to clear and slippery, similar to the consistency of egg whites, a few days before ovulation; you should be able to stretch it apart a couple of inches between your thumb and index or middle finger. The last day of that egg-white consistency is likely your most fertile day. While some women have enough mucus to just look at it on toilet paper, others will need to insert a clean finger or two into their vagina, reaching upward toward the cervix.
Remember some medicines like antihistamines can dry up mucus, and other factors like breastfeeding can impact also, so monitoring your cervical mucus may be most useful when done in conjunction with other things like charting your BBT or using an ovulation predictor kit.
You Have Sex Before Ovulation
To ensure that his swimmers are meeting up with your egg at just the right time, have sex every other day, starting five days before you expect to ovulate, this 6-day period is referred to as the “fertile window,” ending on the day of ovulation. Extra Tip: If you’re using an OPK and you get a positive result that day (around day 12 in a typical 28-day cycle, where ovulation would take place on day 14), have sex that day and the next two days, if possible. While there is some evidence that having sex daily may lead to slightly higher pregnancy rates, daily sex should be avoided if it adds to the stress of trying to conceive for you or your partner. If you’re up for it, though, daily sex won’t do you any harm as frequent ejaculations won't decrease male fertility.
You Forget The Big 'O'
While we ’re all for getting exactly what we want, don’t worry about it if you can’t achieve orgasm, although it certainly adds to the enjoyment of the moment, it won’t impact your chances of getting pregnant.
Remember, just do what feels good to the two of you. Don’t worry about position et cetera is best it's what's good to you. And while you should feel free to hang out on your back for a few minutes post-sex, don’t feel like you have to, as sperm can be found way up in the cervical canal seconds after ejaculation, regardless of which position a couple was in, according to the ASRM.
You Stop Using Lube
Important tip Encourage your partner to really up the foreplay: lubricants are toxic to sperm and while there are some lubricant formulas that claim to be fertility-friendly, don't believe it just go for more kisses, touching, and whatever else you need from your partner to get in the mood.
Sperm Myths
Although you may have been told guys should keep their “manly bits” cool for optimum performance and maintaining sperm count, there’s no evidence that wearing briefs instead of boxers alters temperature significantly.
You Drop The Ciggies
There are dozens of valid reasons to quit smoking, but if you (or your partner) haven’t kicked the habit yet, add one more important reason to your list as it may have a negatively impact your fertility as well as that of any potential kids as new research says smoking may actually harm your child’s fertility also..
All scientific studies on smoking and fertility show that smoking leads to a higher rate of infertility and a longer conception times, and remember to consider 'passive' smoking. Not only does smoking harm a woman’s ovaries, but it likely hastens the loss of eggs and may even bring on menopause up to 4 years early. Add, smoking has been associated with an increased risk of miscarriage, premature and low birth weight babies, and an increased incidence of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS).
If your fella needs more convincing, let him know that smoking may lower sperm count and make the little critters lazy, as well as lead to increased abnormalities in sperm shape and function.
In short, you should both kick the habit if you want the best chance at conceiving quickly and having a healthy pregnancy and baby.
You Cut The Alcohol
Although many of us know women who got pregnant seemingly thanks to a few drinks, there’s not a whole lot of clear information about the link between female fertility and alcohol. There has been some indication of a higher risk of infertility in women who consume two alcoholic drinks per day, so it’s probably best to avoid having two or more drinks per day when trying to get pregnant. However, there’s no evidence that more moderate alcohol consumption decreases fertility.
You Reduce Caffeine
Many of us rely on our morning cuppa to help us ease into the day and it’s totally fine to have a cup or two of coffee per day or its equivalent when trying to get pregnant. But, high levels of caffeine consumption (more than 5 cups of coffee per day or 500 mg of caffeine) have been associated with decreased fertility and consuming more than 200-300 mg/day during pregnancy may increase the risk of miscarriage. So feel free to continue enjoying your morning latte—just know that a 16-ounce (Grande) cup of Starbucks brewed coffee can pack a whopping 330 mg of caffeine.
You Eat Well
Although fertility rates are decreased in women who are super skinny or obese, there’s little evidence that any particular diet helps increases a woman’s chances of getting pregnant quickly. Good general guidelines are to eat a well-balanced diet and avoid heavy consumption of seafood high in mercury, as elevated blood mercury levels have been associated with infertility (so avoid eating shark, swordfish, king mackerel or tilefish, and eat up to 12 ounces a week of a variety of fish and shellfish that are lower in mercury, like shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, and catfish,
You Relax and Have Fun
“Just relax” are likely the least appropriate words of many women trying to conceive, especially if it’s taking longer than hoped. But there is evidence that stress may play a role in infertility. Trying yoga or another mind-body program for relaxation or stress-reduction techniques that could help you while trying to conceive. Or do more of whatever gets you to your happy place, don’t make turn sex into a chore.
Tagged in Pregnancy Parenting Tips