36. How to Get Pregnant Faster: Tips for Trying to Conceive

Are you wanting to become pregnant as soon as possible, but not sure where to start? Tune in to start your journey to conception and figure out what your next steps are for a positive pregnancy test.

In this episode, we’ll talk about:

• How to increase your chances of becoming pregnant each month…
• Tips to prepare your body for pregnancy and rid your body from leftover birth control hormones…
• Key lifestyle factors to improve fertility…
• What to look for when choosing a prenatal vitamin BEFORE conception…
• …. And advice on tracking your fertile window and understanding when you’re ovulating!

If you’re ready to jump into the journey of parenthood, tune in for valuable tips, personal experiences, and helpful advice from a midwife on how to get pregnant. 

Products mentioned:

Prenatal vitamin

Pregmate ovulation predictor kit

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Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Your Birth Bestie podcast. Today we are talking about how to get a positive pregnanct test if you’re ready to start trying now, or maybe you’re planning ahead– either way, this episode we’ll get into the questions you’re probably already thinking about in preparation for becoming pregnant, how to actually increase your chances of becoming pregnant each month, and next steps for what to do if it’s not happening as fast as you hoped it would. If you are new here please hit the follow button so you can get a notification every Tuesday of the new episode that is released, and if you’re been here for awhile and enjoy this kind of content, I’d love if you could take a few seconds to rate the show. Thank you again for being here and let’s get right into it.

So, if you’re planning to have a baby, you may be thinking about how long will it actually take to get pregnant. And of course, you know, it could happen on your first month of trying or it could take many months or even years, it’s very hard to predict. But, just to give you an idea, 30% of couples trying to conceive, are successful in the first month, 75% of couples conceive within 6 months, 90% of couples conceive within 1 year, and 95% of couples conceive within 2 years. So that does leave out 5% of women struggling with infertility after 2 years, and we won’t go too deep into infertility, but I do want to share more about when to seek further help and testing regarding fertility if this is part of your story.

But there are a lot of things that you can control and that are important to increase your fertility. First, the most obvious one is to stop your birth control if you’re using one. If you’re not ready to conceive quite yet, but are hoping to in the next 3-6 months, I would talk to your provider about discontinuing whatever method you are using and use a barrier method like condoms, to allow for those hormones to get out of your system. Stopping your birth control before you start trying to conceive, is also helpful for you to get a better idea of what your natural menstrual cycle is like. If you’ve been on birth control for 10 years, your cycle will likely return to what it was before, and this sometimes is irregular periods, which is not ideal when trying to conceive. It’s still possible to become pregnant, just is a little harder. So tracking your cycles for a few months can be helpful to better understand your cycle length and estimate days of ovulation. You will be able to get more precise information if you use an ovulation predictor kit as well, which I’ll talk about more as well here in a minute along with other alternatives too.

Before I had my first baby and when I was deciding to come off of hormonal birth control the year prior, I was meeting with an acupuncturist who recommended a liver detox. I was having 90 day cycles, then 60 day cycles, and then finally after the liver detox they were back to every 32 days, which was normal for me. So this is a great tool to use if you’ve been using hormonal birth control for awhile in preparation for conception and I wanted to make sure to add that was a key for me to regulating my cycles and making them more predictable.

Also, emphasizing a balanced diet, regular exercise, healthy sleep patterns, and adequate hydration are all important when preparing your body for pregnancy. These are things we can control, so maximize the benefits by making these lifestyle modifications a priority! We want to encourage hormonal balance, stabilize blood sugar, decrease stress and cortisol levels, and really take care of our bodies to prepare it for the long journey of pregnancy ahead. 

During this preconception period too, you should also be taking a prenatal vitamin. Yes, even before you get a positive pregnancy test, prenatal vitamins are important, especially because of folic acid, or the more bioavailable version is L-methylfoalte which is better absorbed and used by your body. So good recommendation is to look for prenatal vitamins with L-methyfolate instead of folic acid to reduce baby’s risk of serious neural tube defects.

The next important piece of conception is knowing when your fertile window is. Even if you’re a few months away from when you’re going to try to conceive, this can still be a great time to begin tracking your ovulation and being more aware of what is happening in your body, to increase your chances of becoming pregnant, when you choose it’s the right time. 

So your fertile window is the time during your menstrual cycle when you’re mostly likely to get pregnant. This is usually the five days leading up to ovulation, the day of ovulation, and then the day after ovulation. For example, if you always have a 28 day cycle, you would be expect to ovulate on day 14, so your fertile window would be days 9 through 15. This would be the textbook scenario, but even if you have a 28 day cycle, you’re not guaranteed to ovulate on day 14, and that’s why knowing your body is helpful.

And there are many ways to determine when your fertile window is. Without thinking much about this, you may already notice changes in your cervical mucous or discharge throughout your cycle. At the time of ovulation you would be expecting cervical mucous the consistency of egg-whites, so thin and stretchy, which helps sperm travel to the egg to fertilize it. So becoming familiar with your body in this way can be helpful and is very easy to do. There are many apps to track this as well, one that I use is called Clue Period and Ovulation Tracker. Really easy and user friendly to update each day.

You can also purchase ovulation predictor test kits that measure lutenizing hormone in your urine which predicts ovulation by knowing when you have an increase, or a surge in LH. One brand of tests I recommend is Pregmate. It’s an effective, less expensive alternative to the digital tests, which for me didn’t work at all. The first time I used the Clearblue digital ovulation tests, I got a smiley face for like 10 days in a row or something, which meant I was fertile for 10 days which is just not even accurate at all. They were also super expensive and for me, I just wasn’t a fan. 

But what you do is pee in a cup, dip the ovulation strip for 5 seconds, lay the strip flat, and read the results in 5 minutes.

The results are not read the same as a pregnancy test, where two lines means pregnant or in this case ovulating, and one line means not. We’re actually looking to see if the two color lines are visible and that the test line is equal to or darker than the control line. If this is the case, this is positive and there is a high amount of lutenizing hormone or your LH surge. If there is only one line that you can see or the test line is lighter than the control line, this is a negative ovulation test.

Lutenizing hormone is released at low levels throughout your menstrual cycle and once a develoing egg follicle gets to a certain size, LH increases to a really high level which will trigger ovulation to happen about 24-48 hours later. So as soon as you get a positive ovulation test, you know this is the beginning of ovulation and is your peak fertile day. 

And I want to mention too that this isn’t at all something that you have to do. Charting and analyzing hormone patterns can stress some people out, so you definitely don’t have to do it, but some people like to actively be doing something to increase their chances each month. So do what is best for you and what will stress you out the least. 

There is also basal body temperature charting. This one is a little harder to do, because you have to have slept for at least a three hour stretch and take your temperature with a digital oral thermometer before you get up from bed. You would then use an app like Clue or Glow, there are many more too, to chart your readings each morning. You would be looking for a slight dip just before ovulation and then after the egg is released, your temperature rises and stays up for several days. So the rise in temperature let’s you know that you already ovulated. So, I find it more helpful to use as a tool to become familiar with your fertile window and using that information for consecutive months of trying to conceive.

And then if you’re doing all the things and having unprotected intercourse during your fertile window every other day or so, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll be pregnant on your first try like we were led to believe in middle school health class. Like I mentioned before it can take time, and most couples are successful after 12 months of trying. This doesn’t mean if it’s taking longer than you hoped, you shouldn’t be listened to or your feelings of disappointment or frustration aren’t valid. This is an extremely emotional time and I hope your time does come if this is something you are wanting.

The general guidelines are that if you’re under the age of 35 and are not pregnant within 12 months of trying, the appropriate next step is to be evaluated and seek out more assistance to see if there is something going on with you or your partner than can be addressed so you don’t have to keep waiting. If you’re over 35 years old and have not become pregnant after 6 months of trying, this is also when it’s generally indicated as a good time to be evaluated for fertility and come up with a plan on how to move forward. But this doesn’t mean you can’t seek more information or professional help before that, it just might be more difficult to find someone. There are medical doctors that can run tests and also more holistic approaches to infertility that I am recently learning more about myself such as hormone coaches. The results women are getting without invasive medial intervention is very interesting to learn about and is an option you may be interested in exploring if you find yourself in this situation one day. I just really want you to know that there is not one right time or way to become pregnant, this is a very individualized experience and should be treated that way. There are things we can control to make the process easier, but also many things we can’t and that’s okay.

And sometimes the stress of “trying” is too much. You may need to let go of expectations for a certain timeline and just focus on being the best version of yourself, allowing other pieces to fall into place when they are meant to happen. I hope your desires of motherhood come true and please reach out with any questions you may have. I would love to help simplify this journey for you and support you during this exciting, but sometimes challenging time.

Thank you so much for tuning in to the podcast today. To continue this conversation, next week we will be talking about implantation, how soon you can take a pregnancy test, and calculating your due date, specifically why every online calculator seems to spit out some slightly different date. So if you enjoy the show, please follow along and it would mean so much if you could take a quick second, just like 10 seconds, before moving on, to rate the show. It is the best way to support this podcast and I appreciate you so much for doing that. Thank you so much for being here and I will see you next time. Bye everyone!