When you’re trying to get pregnant, every day brings questions with it. Today we’re taking a look at some of those questions, to help you find answers and feel more confident about the challenges ahead of you.
When Should I Try to Conceive?
In every menstrual cycle you go through peaks and troughs of fertility. If you’re trying to conceive at a time when you have no fertile egg in your system, and, crucially, when one won’t be ovulated within the maximum lifespan of sperm, then you can’t get pregnant, and your fertility is at a low.
Your fertile window is when the lifespan of sperm does overlap with the active fertile period of an egg. Sperm survive for up to five days, and eggs are fertile for no longer than 24 hours, so you have a fertile window of five or six days in each menstrual cycle. You need to ensure you’re identifying this fertile window so you have the best chance of conceiving when you want to. An ovulation tracker device can help you to get pregnant by alerting you to when you’re next going to ovulate.
Can I Boost My Fertility?
If you’re trying to conceive you’re going to want to try and boost your fertility as much as possible to give yourself the best possible chance of quick success. Is it even possible to increase your fertility?
Fortunately the answer to this question is ‘yes’. There are some simple steps you can take to improve your reproductive health and give your fertility a boost.
Cutting out alcohol and smoking both have a dramatic effect on the health and lifespan of both eggs and sperm, so if you’re even considering starting a family over the next year, this is a lifestyle change you should make right away.
Adding more green vegetables to your diet doesn’t just give you a boost in your general health: they give you important vitamins (B complex vitamins especially) to help build both sperm and eggs, and include a dose of the electrolytes your body uses to run it’s menstrual cycle, so you ovulate regularly and predictably!
How Long Does it Take to Get Pregnant?
This is probably the biggest question you’ll be asking yourself, as soon as you start trying to conceive – when will it work! It’s impossible to say for sure: however hard you work on it there is an element of luck involved.
The NHS explains that 84% of couples conceive within a year of beginning to try. If you don’t succeed within that first year, it may be worth looking for additional help.