1) Lead a healthy lifestyle.  The first and foremost step women should take when planning on trying to have a baby is to ensure that they have a health body in order to maximize their chances of conception and to prepare themselves for the physical stress for when they do get pregnant.  They should maintain a sensible diet, sleep regularly (8 hours a day), lead a less stressful life, achieve an ideal weight (consult doctor), and exercise. 

A common myth is that women shouldn’t exercise if they want to get pregnant, but this is highly untrue.  In fact, exercise is extremely helpful before and during pregnancy.  It increases your energy level, helps you deal with back strains during pregnancy, prevents joint problems and hemorrhoids, and helps you lose weight after you give birth.  It is important to make sure you don’t overdo it however, as excessive exercise can cause your weight to drop below normal levels and cause you to have irregular or no periods at all, which means it’ll be impossible to conceive since you won’t be ovulating. 

2) Make sure your body is healthy – take the necessary medical tests.  You may feel healthy and look perfectly normal, but there are many risks – some even severe – that may affect your pregnancy and therefore should be checked before prior to conception.  Consult your doctor on your medical history, take all the necessary vaccinations if you haven’t already, get a urine analysis, cervical smear, check for Sexually Transmitted Diseases, get viral tests, have an internal examination, and also take genetic tests in order to know the chances of birth defects and genetic disorders such as Cystic Fibrosis which may cause fatality/ miscarriages. 

Additional tests to take include:

a) The post-coital exam, which tests the quality of your cervical mucus within 24 hours after the luteinizing hormone surges.  It checks how well the sperm can swim through the cervical mucus, which is the vaginal discharge.  Normally, the cervical mucus should be sticky and thick (like sticky rice), but in the days leading up to ovulation, the discharge should become clear and slippery and have a raw-egg white color.  (You are most fertile on the last day you have this type of discharge due to the increase in estrogen levels.) 

For thick or hostile cervical mucus even in days leading to ovulation, you should ask your doctor to prescribe Guaifenesin tablets (found in Robitussin), which thins out your cervical mucus like it thins out mucus in your lungs from a cold.  Thinner mucus would provide easier flow for sperm and help fertility.

b) Serum progesterone tests: It’s a blood test made seven days after ovulation to check your progesterone levels (which prepares the uterus for implantation of the fertilized eggs.

3) Alcohol and smoking.  It’s pretty obvious that drinking alcohol and smoking is not part of leading a healthy lifestyle, but women and men should realize the extent to which they can harm their body and chances of pregnancy.  Women who smoke have a significantly less chance of conceiving a child and women who smoke during pregnancy have a greater risk of having a miscarriage.  Men who smoke tend to have lower sperm counts, as a study showed that ½ a pack a day can lower their sperm count by 20%.  Babies of smokers also have a lower birth weight and a higher chance of premature birth.  Secondhand smoke can cause your baby to develop asthma, bronchitis, and cancer.  Studies also showed that women who consume alcohol reduce their chances of getting pregnant by more than 50%.   

4) Tea is better than coffee.  Researchers have shown that drinking regular amounts of coffee can also reduce fertility.  More specifically, women who drink more than 300mg a day of caffeinated coffee can reduce their chances of pregnancy by 27%.  A study performed by the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program of Northern California in Oakland has shown that drinking caffeinated tea each day might actually increase your odds of conceiving.  According to their researchers, led by Betty Caan, Dr. P.H., polyphenolic compounds in tea may inhibit chromosomal abnormalities and decrease the number of nonviable compounds thereby increasing fertility.

Herbs are also known to help boost fertility.  It’s important that you consult a medical herbalist, however, to see which ones fit your personal condition.  Herbs that may be helpful include black cohosh, agnus castus, blue cohosh, mistletoe, motherwort and false unicorn root. 

4) Know your ovulation cycle.  This is key to conception.  Ovulation is when one of the ovaries ejects an egg which travels through the fallopian tubes and implants itself in the uterus where it’ll sit for 24 hours until it degrades if not fertilized.  According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, a women’s fertility cycle is six days long (five days before ovulation plus the day of ovulation).  Instead of following conventional methods of random probability, the best thing to do is to have intercourse during your ovulation cycle in order to magnify your chances of having the egg and sperm fertilize.

By standards, ovulation occurs halfway through a woman’s menstrual cycle.  For a woman with a 28-day cycle, they will ideally ovulate on the 14^th day, or for the 32-day cycle, on the 16^th day.  The menstrual cycle constantly varies, however, as ovulation may occur as early as day 8 or as late as day 20 of the cycle.  It’s important for women to consult their doctor so they can know exactly when they ovulate since the schedule is different for each individual.

It’s recommended that an effective way to get pregnant is by having sex every other day from the 10^th to the 18^th day of your cycle.  You should start counting Day 1 from the first day of your period and days 10-18 should therefore overlap the ovulation cycle (this is for the 28-day cycle; you should adjust according to your menstrual cycle).  The NIEHS study shows that if intercourse occurs up to 2 days before or on the day of ovulation, there is a 36% chance of pregnancy; intercourse 4-6 days before ovulation lowers the chance to 10%.

A great way to monitor your ovulation cycle is to buy a fertility monitor or ovulation predictor.  They measure the level of your hormones, which gives you a 24-36 hour advance warning on when you ovulate.  A recommended ovulation predictor is the Clear Plan Easy, $24, results show in 5 minutes.

When you’re not ovulating, the eggs will stay in the ovary making pregnancy impossible since it can never meet up with the sperm.  Therefore many women believe that they can’t get pregnant during menstruation.  Technically this is true since during menstruation, a woman is not ovulating.  However, many unwanted pregnancies have resulted from this anyways because when you have sex during your period, the sperm can still reside in the uterus for its lifespan of five days, so if you ovulate early, you can become pregnant.  Although the chances are slim, it is still a possibility. 

5) Monitor your basal body temperature (BBT).  Another way to increase your chances is by checking your BBT, which is the temperature of your body when you first wake up in the morning.  When you have a slight increase/spike in your body temperature, it signals that your body is ovulating. 

6) Tips for intercourse.  It is believed that the best conception position is the missionary position (man on top), which allows gravity to encourage semen to flow towards the uterus.  It also allows for sperm to be placed next to the opening of the womb.  The rear-entry and side-by-side position has also been noted to maximize chances of depositing the sperm near the womb.  Women are also suggested to lie on their back for half an hour after having intercourse with their hip raised by a pillow in order to help gravity move the sperm along.

7) Take extra folic acid before conception.  Folic acid and folate are part of the water soluble B vitamin group.  They help reduce the risk of neural tube defects such as a malformed skull, brain, and Spina Bifida in a developing baby, which is when there is an incomplete closure of one/more of the vertebral arches of the spine causing a malformed spinal cord.  You can take folic acid in the form of supplements, or eat foods rich in folic acid or folate such as leaf vegetables like spinach, turnip greens, dried beans, and peas, yeast extract, milk, cabbage, cauliflower, citrus fruits, potatoes, and cereals. 

What Men Can Do

1) Men should take a semen analysis test to make sure their sperm cells are numerous and viable.  Measles may lead to sterility and high fevers can also reduce the sperm count.  It is also important they check for STD’s.   

2) Common myths for men: Men who wear briefs have a lower sperm count than men who wear boxers.  Studies for this theory have been imprecise since there are also studies which show that men’s underwear do not have an effect on their sperm count.  Therefore it’s best not to dwell too much upon it. 

It’s also believed that men should postpone sex to store up sperm.  No.  This is not necessary (unless you have a very low sperm count) since men have enough sperm for fertility.  A normal sperm count is between 50 million and 150 million per millilitre.  A sperm count below 50 million per millilitre is considered low and may signify fertility problems.  The myth is also wrong since the more you have sex, the greater your chances are of conceiving.  People who have sex everyday have a 25% chance of conceiving, every other day -22% chance, and once a week, a 10% chance. 

3) Stay healthy.  Like women, men’s fertility is also largely affected by their lifestyle.  Stress, fatigue, excessive heat, drugs, and illness can all reduce their sperm count making it harder to conceive.  Therefore, exercise, eat well, don’t do drugs, and be happy. 

Sources:

www.fertilinet.com/tips.htm

www.babycentre.co.uk/preconception/trying

http://www.parenttime.com/pregnancyarticles/howtogetpregnant.html

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