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Originally published 09/25/2018 on my retired blog, Frugal Nesting
Once we decide that it’s time to start a family, most of us don’t look forward to months and months of “trying”.
Not that the “trying” might not start out fun but after a few short months it can become more like a chore. Honestly, we really just want to understand how to get pregnant fast.
Did you know that approximately 30% of couples will get pregnant on their first try, meaning their first one-month cycle of trying to conceive?
On one hand that seems like a significant number, but try telling that to the other 70%.
But I might be able to help the latter. I have a proven strategy that you should at least try if you really want to get pregnant fast.
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I’m going to be completely honest with you – this is not a cure-all strategy for couples who have been struggling to conceive.
I am not a medical professional by any means. I just know what worked for us and at least one other couple that I recommended it to.
It’s also no secret. You can find most of this same stuff by scouring the internet and talking to medical professionals.
But lucky for you, I’ve done all the legwork for you! And I tested it out myself!
HOW TO GET PREGNANT FAST
Below are the very steps that we used to conceive our two youngest children. It doesn’t hurt to try and see if it just might work for you too!
PLAN AHEAD
This seems like an obvious one, but I highly encourage you to take this seriously.
You need to go into this with a positive expectation that you will get pregnant fast -maybe on your first try. Never assume it’s just a trial run.
Start this planning process at least 3 months before you want to start.
Stop taking your birth control and start taking prenatal vitamins. Then sit down with your partner and a calendar for the year.
This is not about planning to “try” necessarily, though there is a bit of that. This is about planning your future child’s birthday for their whole life.
You can use a reverse due date calculator to figure out potential conception dates against potential due dates for planning purposes.
Are there any holidays that you want to avoid? I’ve always been adamant that I did not want any child of mine to be born around Christmas. Well, babies sometimes have other ideas.
We actually planned it perfectly. My estimated due date (EDD) for my second child was 11/20/2015, which was about a week before Thanksgiving.
I was fine with that. But the little stinker hung around for about 2 extra weeks and was born on 12/02/2015 instead.
So I ended up with a December baby despite all of our best efforts. So always give yourself a 2-week buffer on both sides of your planned EDD.
Perhaps you have a lot of family and friends with existing birthdays in a month. Or there’s a super busy time for you at work. Or you live in an area with serious seasonal weather concerns.
Maybe you always wished you had a summer birthday and want to plan that for your kiddo. These are all things to plan around.
In addition, do consider any unique activities that you have coming up in the next 10 months.
This last time we made the mistake of doing a trial run in advance of a wedding that I was scheduled to be in. We were positive there was no way we would get pregnant in the first month of trying, but we were wrong.
So I was in a wedding with all my besties and couldn’t even have a glass of champagne! No fun!
Make a plan to start “trying” as of your optimal month, after considering all of the things mentioned above. Make a list of all the months that you are willing to try over the next year, skipping any month that is not ideal.
If, after a year, you are not pregnant then it may be time to just go for it and forget this step.
TRACKING
This is another one that you really should start at least three months in advance for it to be effective. This requires the use of my favorite fertility app, Fertility Friend (FF). I used this the last 2 times that I got pregnant, and it is awesome!
Set up a free account. They do have paid options that you may wish to consider once you’ve familiarized yourself with everything.
You can do great with just the basic free charting though. Just start on the first day of your next period.
Keep in mind that you must complete your daily data entry at the same time every day for it to be spot-on. You will log your basal body temperature (BBT), cervical fluid, menses, and any lovemaking daily.
You will need a thermometer for tracking BBT. I cheated and used a regular in-ear thermometer, but you should probably get a real BBT fertility thermometer if the goal is to get pregnant fast. And you need to take your temperature first thing in the morning before you even get out of bed for accuracy.
After a couple of months, you will begin to see trends and gain great insight into your cycle and your fertile window. This is critical for the next step if you are trying to get pregnant fast.
My actual chart from the month we conceived #3!
CALENDAR
This is where the real fun begins. Once you’ve been tracking on FF for a few months you are ready to start scheduling lovemaking.
Sure, you can do this using a regular calendar. But I have a MUCH better resource for you.
This Ovulation and Fertility Calculator on BabyMed is actually a detailed calendar. It.is.awesome!
You can plug in the first day of your last period, cycle length, and luteal phase (all of which you will know from FF) and it will spit out insanely detailed fertility information about the cycle in question. Including detailed information on your fertile days, possible implantation, when you might be able to get an accurate HPT result, etc.
It’s the best when you are trying to get pregnant fast!
SCHEDULE
The calendar will likely give you about 6 potential fertile days, including the first “little” fertile day and the day after ovulation.
If you are just trying to get pregnant and let nature take its course with the gender, then I recommend that you “try” once per day for all 6 days.
Sure, get some cheap ovulation test strips so you can keep track of and confirm ovulation. But don’t make the mistake of waiting until ovulation starts and then missing out on those early fertile days!
I will be writing a post soon about how to increase your chances of conceiving a particular gender, but this post is just about how to get pregnant fast, not gender selection. So we’ll just save that for later.
And the time of day matters too. If possible, schedule those sessions in the late afternoon or early evening, with the goal being between 5 PM – 5:30 PM when potency is at its peak. Other good times are between 10 PM – 1 AM or 6 AM – 9 AM.
SUPPLEMENTS
And if you want even more of a boost, then there are some supplements that we have used with positive results. First, you may need a fertility-friendly lubricant like this one. You can also find supplements that promote fertile cervical mucus, cycle regulation, and boosted motility for men.
We conceived our 2nd child with the help of these. And someone I knew had been trying for a year with no luck, so I gave her our leftovers and she got pregnant quickly after starting them.
Coincidence? Who knows – but I’ll take it!!
TWO-WEEK WAIT (TWW)
And then you wait. This part is excruciating whether it’s your first month or not.
I have zero patience and find it impossible to wait. So I’ve spent a small fortune on pregnancy tests in one month before.
That is until I found these super cheap pregnancy test strips online. You can get 25 for under $10! They are the same brand as the ovulation test strips above and are great for early testing.
As soon as you see the promising hint of a faint line, you can use a free pregnancy test checker app.
This helps distinguish whether or not you are really seeing what you think you’re seeing. Effects like grayscale, invert, and brighten can help where the naked eye fails.
If you truly think there is a line, then it’s time to purchase a real home pregnancy test (HPT). I recommend two.
The First Response Early Result Pregnancy Test is a great early detector. But I also like the clarity of a digital test, so I usually follow up with Clearblue Digital.
But don’t do any of that until you read my post about the fun tradition we have for turning testing into a special family memory. Read Pregnancy Test Time? Try This Cute Tradition When You Are TTC for more details on this!
And if you need a supportive community to surround you during this time, then we would welcome you as a founding member of our Working Mama-To-Be Facebook Group. It’s a FREE group for working mamas and [hopeful] mamas-to-be to share stories and support for one another. It’s new, so it’s still small and close-knit!
OUR STORY
You’re probably wondering what makes me an expert on how to get pregnant fast…
Well – I’m not. I only have my own experience to go off of, but it worked! So why not?
I’m a planner. I plan everything. And leave very little up to chance.
So I research every detail of every endeavor before I embark upon uncharted territory. And growing our family was no different.
That being said, we’ve been insanely lucky. And that is not something that I take for granted. Every single day I am reminded of how very blessed we’ve been and am forever grateful.
THE ORIGINAL
Our first child was conceived the old-fashioned way. We were young, in love, and just threw caution to the wind. There was no “trying” or planning involved.
Though I had been off of birth control for about 3 months leading up to that. But that was only to give my system a break.
And had been taking a prenatal vitamin for my hair & nails for months. I’m sure both of those factors helped us to get pregnant fast – really fast!
All the stars aligned, and we were blessed with a beautiful baby boy, our GQ, in September 2009. You can read his birth story HERE.
THE MIDDLE
We waited quite a while before considering number two.
GQ was a handful…a full-time job really. And daycare in the Seattle area is just as crazy as the housing prices.
But we always knew we wanted more than one kiddo and GQ seriously needed a sibling! As he got a little older things got easier.
So we looked toward the future and determined that the timing was right as he was transitioning from daycare to elementary school.
So I got busy researching and planning. I signed up for FF, found the BabyMed calendar, and we got down to business.
But that first month we were unsuccessful and I was surprised at how disappointed I was. But I didn’t let myself get too discouraged.
So back to the drawing board I went and did even more in-depth research to fine-tune my approach, adding in those supplements.
Then lo and behold, the second cycle came and went. I suffered through the two-week wait (TWW). And we got our big fat positive (BFP)!!!
He was just about two weeks late, but we got our little lovebug Logi in December of 2015! I’m still working on posting his birth story, but keep an eye out for it!
NUMBER THREE
After Logi was born we had a big question mark hanging over our heads.
We’d both always wanted at least three kids and I had always seen myself having at least one daughter. But our boys are wild things and we’re not rich.
Plus that clock is really ticking as we just seem to keep getting older. So we just weren’t sure if it made sense.
But in the end, we decided that we would never regret having another baby, but would likely regret not trying. So we went for it!
I wanted Logi to be at least two years old before I got pregnant again. I’ve learned that is the minimum amount of time to let your body & system recover and replenish from your last pregnancy.
Plus, I wanted to ensure that there were no pregnancy-related issues with my milk supply for Logi since I wanted to nurse until he was at least two and a half.
Anyway, we had a discussion about potential birth dates, I resumed charting on FF, and we broke out the calendar.
We decided to attempt a trial run, assuming that with our age and history that we would not be successful that first month.
Well, apparently all of the groundwork leading up to that was truly successful, as we got pregnant that first cycle! Boy did we get pregnant fast!
And here we are, expecting our third baby in early 2019! Check out our reveal in my recent post Anatomy Of A Viral Pregnancy Announcement.
YOUR TURN TO GET PREGNANT FAST
Now it’s your turn to try! If you follow this strategy to the letter, I really think you have a great chance of getting pregnant fast!
And if you do, please visit me on Instagram and let me know. There is nothing I love more than pregnancy announcements and new babies!!
I wish you all the luck in the world on this beautiful journey.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope you’ll visit again soon!
BFP?
And once you finally get your BFP (Big Fat Positive), then you should look into my absolute favorite online childbirth class taught by Hilary of Pulling Curls (she’s a professional labor + delivery nurse by day)! My readers get a special discount, so use code Nesting10 to get 10% OFF if you sign up!
PS //
And don’t forget to check out all of my favorite things on my recommendation pages for the best things to make your life easier, whether it’s parenting, budgeting, family living, or blog related.
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