Tips for TTC (trying to conceive)

Top recs from your new mom friend 🫶

This is what I tell my best friends when they are thinking about "trying" and don't know where to start. It's what worked for me but, as with anything, there is no one-size-fits-all way!

Start tracking your cycle!

After we decided we wanted to start trying for a baby, the first thing I did was go off my birth control. You can absolutely get pregnant right away after stopping birth control but my OBGYN recommended that I give my body a few months to "even out" so my natural cycle could return. After about three months I started taking ovulation tests and tracking my cycle using the PreMom app.

• Ovulation tests. I liked these ovulation strips because they also come with a ton of pregnancy tests, which are expensive to buy individually. You get 100 ovulation strips and 50 pregnancy tests for about $30.

  • My friend Katie put me on to PreMom, it's seriously cool! You basically take a picture of the ovulation strip and it analyzes it to come up with a “score” so it’s very easy to tell if your levels are rising, or when you hit your peak. It also shows your high fertility days (aka good days to try!) which actually may be a few days before you ovulate.

  • You can start by tracking your period and the app will start to show you your ideal days to take ovulation tests (and later, pregnancy tests). The more data you put in, the more accurate it will be!

  • There are TONS of cool techy things out there now to track ovulation - way more than there were the last time I was trying to get pregnant. Natural Cycles, Oura, etc.

• Learn from my mistakes. Something to know about ovulation tests - a positive ovulation test doesn’t necessarily mean “Okay, time to get busy!” That’s what I thought and when we started trying for our first we waited to have sex on the first positive ovulation test day and didn’t try again for a few days. What I later learned is that your egg can drop anytime between 12 to 36 hours after that positive test result. Whoopsies!

  • What ended up working for us was to follow PreMom's advice and try every day within my "fertile window." Highly recommend using some kind of tracking app so you don't have to remember everything on your own!

Make any big lifestyle adjustments now.

Once you're pregnant, you'll want to take excellent care of yourself because *spoiler alert* every mom wants to do everything they possibly can for their child! There are a lot of changes to make when you are pregnant like staying extra hydrated, eating well, avoiding alcohol, cutting down on caffeine, etc. I think it helps to start doing some of this while TTC so you’re not dealing with making all of these changes on top of things like morning sickness, fatigue and hormones. It’s also good for baby! Your diet pre-pregnancy can help start you off on the right foot in your first trimester when you may not be able to stomach your usual foods.

• Start taking a prenatal vitamin. There are a ton of options out there so be sure to talk to your doctor. I loved Ritual's for both of my boy pregnancies but fully acknowledge that it's pricey. My doctor always said the best prenatal is the one you'll actually take daily. With my nausea in the first trimester, I couldn't handle any of the other ones I tried. You can also ask your doctor if you’d feel more comfortable with a prescription prenatal.

  • For baby #3, I got curious about Perelel and ended up really liking it! It made sense to me that each stage of pregnancy is different and needed slightly different things.

• Cut back on caffeine. If you’re big on caffeine, you may consider scaling back now. You can still have some caffeine every day while pregnant so you don’t necessarily need to stop altogether, but if you’re having 3+ cups a day you may want to start reducing.

• Consider doing the same for alcohol/smoking. Again, if this is a part of your daily routine now, you may want to start scaling back so you don’t have to stop cold turkey when you find out you’re pregnant. By the time you (usually) know, you’re technically already a month pregnant, which is crazy!

• Streamline anything going in or onto your body. Your usual morning cocktail of supplements may or may not be safe for baby. Same with your retinol creams and botox. Again, you have MORE than enough time to stop these things later, but it's something to be mindful of!

• Your partner can help too. Your partner should also ideally take a vitamin every day and take good care of himself when you’re TTC. It may be helpful for him to stop using certain medications or products during this time - something for him to talk to his doctor about! If he's a smoker, heavy drinker, etc., those are all things that can impact your ability to get pregnant.

Start researching where you want to deliver your baby.

This may feel crazy early but the first thing you'll do when you get a positive pregnancy test is call your OBGYN and make an appointment to confirm the pregnancy. If you already have an OBGYN you love and you want to keep them for delivery, great, but just know that most OB's only have one hospital where they deliver babies. So that decision will be made for you if you decide to stay with them.

• Consider the things that are important to you when making this choice. Do you want to deliver at a birthing center (natural birth, tub birth) or do you want a hospital delivery with access to epidurals or traditional medicine? Is a private recovery suite important to you?

• I personally wanted a practice where midwives did most of the deliveries (for uncomplicated births) and I wanted to deliver at a hospital near me that was designated "baby friendly" meaning they do a lot of special things to encourage mother baby bonding and breastfeeding after delivery. This helped me land on a few hospital options, one of which ended up being highly rated with a great NICU and 15 minutes from my house. Once I picked the hospital, I just researched all of the practices with midwives who delivered there, and that's how I found my practice.

  • I have since read a lot more about "baby friendly" hospitals and Emily Oster makes a pretty compelling argument for opting for a hospital with a nursery, so you can rest after delivery. There's no one right answer here!

• You can also 100% go to confirm your pregnancy at your GP or your existing OBGYN and figure out your new one later. It's just something to think about as you'll start having regular appointments with your baby doctor pretty quickly!

When it’s time to try, don’t overthink it!

When we tried to time things perfectly to the day I was ovulating, it put a lot of pressure on both of us. We ended up getting pregnant when we were trying more regularly and didn't build up the pressure around one specific time. Think this also helped us enjoy what is meant to be an enjoyable thing in the first place!!

• Try not to panic if it doesn’t happen right away. We definitely did when it didn’t happen the very first time, which I now realize is ridiculous. There’s about a 20% chance of getting pregnant each month so try not to put too much pressure on yourself - it will happen when it happens! And if it's not happening as quickly as you'd hoped, check in with your doctor to get a professional opinion.

• You may choose to keep the news that you're trying to yourself so you don't feel added pressure of people wondering "is she pregnant yet!?" This is a totally personal choice. For us, I am a social drinker and knew our friends and family would notice if I stopped drinking out of the blue, so we told our very close circle that we were trying and that we'd let them know as soon as there was news. For me, it helped that I didn't have to feel like I was lying to anyone but again, this is your choice to make. Talk it over with your partner and figure out what makes sense for your situation!

I'd be remiss to share this info without acknowledging that getting pregnant is not always so simple for every family. If you are struggling with infertility or have suffered a miscarriage or loss of a baby, I am so very sorry and I do not want to minimize your experience in any way. I cannot imagine what you have gone through and please know that my heart goes out to you 🤍

___

Your friendly reminder that this blog is not medical advice! This blog is for educational purposes only and does not substitute for professional medical advice. Consult a medical professional or healthcare provider if they seek medical advice, diagnoses, or treatment for you or your family.

Affiliate Disclosure: There are affiliate links in this post, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will be compensated if you click through and take action. These are all items that I purchased with my own money, or was gifted from my registry, so please know I am only recommending things I truly use.