Tips for Getting Pregnant Naturally at Any Age

Welcome to our tips for getting pregnant naturally - at any age. Here we give you our top tips to increase your chances of getting pregnant naturally. We will give you all the information we have personally accumulated about how to get pregnant naturally – even later in life.

Why is getting pregnant naturally so important? Because there is building evidence that many of the conventional infertility treatments can cause complications later in life. In particular, infertility treatment has been linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer. You don’t want to get pregnant later in life and then miss out on raising your children because of cancer.

Here we will discuss many alternatives to conventional fertility treatment. None of the treatments we recommend rely on using recently developed pharmaceutical medications. In addition, while we do recommend you consider Chinese herbal medicine, we only recommend you do so under the supervision of someone certified in Chinese herbal medicine that is leveraging knowledge that has been accumulated by that culture over thousands of years.

If you are struggling to get pregnant or if you have tips to pass on for other women who are trying to get pregnant, do so now at our Conception Forum. This is where we connect women who want to get pregnant with others who have gone thru the struggle and have great tips for getting pregnant!

We cover alot of information about getting pregnant, having a healthy pregnancy, and childbirth on this site. Many of our visitors have requested that we create an ebook to make it easier for them to read thru the information when they are not online. We are pleased to be able to offer over 130 pages of our best advice that you can purchase and download now.  This book includes over 20 pages of our best tips for getting pregnant, even later in life!  Learn more.

Natural Pregnancy and Childbirth Advice eBook

Understanding & Charting YOUR Cycle

Measuring and charting your Waking Body Temperature (BBT), Cervical Fluid and Cervical Position will give you valuable information about your reproductive cycle and when you are most fertile. By documenting your results it will be easy to spot trends and identify potential problems if you are having trouble getting pregnant.

Ovulation Testing

The first of our tips for getting pregnant is to learn when your body ovulates. The best thing that you can do to increase your chances of getting pregnant naturally is to figure out when your body is about to ovulate and therefore when you have reached peak fertility.

The easiest and most predictable way to do this is to start testing for your urine for luteinizing hormone (LH). Often referred to as simply LH, this hormone surges briefly just prior to ovulation. Knowing when your LH surge typically occurs will increase your chances of getting pregnant dramatically.

First read Increase your chances of Getting Pregnant with Ovulation Testing for a quick overview of what we are talking about and how to test your luteinizing hormone (LH) levels. Then come back here for additional tips.

Our favorite ovulation monitor is the ClearBlue Fertility Monitor , because it tests for both Estradiol (an estrogen) as well as for LH, both of which surge before ovulation. As women get older, it gets harder to detect the LH surge alone, therefore testing for both Estrogen and LH is preferrable. Results are displayed in unambiguous terms. It will tell you if you have "low", "high" or "peak" fertility for that day.

If an ovulation monitor is too expensive for you, you can test for ovulation manually my purchasing ovulation test strips online and following a manual process for testing. This is more complicated than using a fertility monitor, but can be just as effective.

Both Arrington and Jennifer ordered a package of ovulation test strips as well as pregnancy test strips ) for around 50 cents each! They used extra ovulation test strips to do additional testing since their Clearblue fertility monitor would only accept one test per day.

As women age, the length of time their body releases LH hormone decreases so it helps to test every four hours (noon, 4pm, 8pm) if you are over 40 so you don’t miss your LH surge. Plus, you are likely to catch other problems like a negative test result because you drank a lot of water and the concentration of LH in your urine is to low to show a positive result even though you are experiencing your LH surge.

Here’s how to test for ovulation without a fertility monitor. Purchase ovulation test strips. We have used Early-Pregnancy-Tests because they have the best prices, fast shipping and great customer service. Their website also has lots of great information. Plan to use around 10 test strips each cycle and get a couple cycles worth of strips.

Next determine when to start testing based on the length of your cycle. If you have a 22 day cycle you should start on day 5, counting day one as the first day of your period. If your cycle is 28 days long start on day 11. If your cycle is 42 days long, start on day 25. Here is a table to make it easy to determine that day you should start testing.

Cycle Length – Start Day for Ovulation Testing

• 22 days – start day 5
• 23 days – start day 6
• 24 days – start day 7
• 25 days – start day 8
• 26 days – start day 9
• 27 days – start day 10
• 28 days – start day 11
• 29 days – start day 12
• 30 days – start day 13
• 31 days – start day 14
• 32 days – start day 15
• 33 days – start day 16
• 34 days – start day 17
• 35 days – start day 18
• 36 days – start day 19
• 37 days – start day 20
• 38 days – start day 21
• 39 days – start day 22
• 40 days – start day 23
• 41 days – start day 24
• 42 days – start day 25

Here are some more helpful tips for getting pregnant. If your cycle length varies, use the shortest cycle from the past 6 months as your starting point. The number of tests you will need to do will be determined by how variable your cycle is.

Try not to lose patience and keep testing, you learn more about your cycle by beginning at the day given above and continuing until you see the LH surge or until your period starts. For example, some women with a standard 28 day cycle will vary when they ovulate from day 11 thru 14. When you want to find the best possible time for intercourse, knowing exactly which is your most fertile day for each cycle makes a huge difference.

When Ovulation Occurs

Most women will ovulate between 12-48 hours after the LH surge is detected, with around 36 hours being the most common after the actual surge. By testing in the afternoon as discussed on our Ovulation Testing page, you should get more notice since it would be the earliest that you would see the reading.

When to have Intercourse after detecting our LH Surge

To increase chance of getting pregnant, the best time to have intercourse is the day of your LH surge. That means if you are testing at 2pm in the afternoon, you should have intercourse that evening just before going to sleep.

Why is it best to have intercourse just before going to sleep? By staying horizontal and falling asleep immediately after intercourse you ensure the maximum amount of sperm remains inside your vagina where they have the opportunity of fertilizing your egg instead of ending up in your underwear. As women get older the quality of their vaginal mucus lessons, therefore you want the sperm to end up as close to your cervix as possible so they have the least distance to travel.

If you can’t time intercourse for when you are going to sleep for the night, then plan to stay horizontal after intercourse for at least an hour or two to give yourself the best chances of getting pregnant.

Here’s a sneaky tip for getting pregnant! If you know which way your uterus tips (forward or backward) or if you do cervical testing as detailed below, you can either lie on our stomach (forward tipping uterus) or back (backward tiping uterus) so that gravity helps draw the sperm down thru your cervical opening. At the same time you can use pillows to elevate your hips so that the sperm are drawn into rather than run out of your vagina.

Tips for getting pregnant even when your timing isn’t optimal

If you travel, don’t get disheartened if you can’t make the optimal time. The following tips for getting pregnant are from our own experienced older moms.

Arrington got pregnant after flying home early from half way around the world when her LH surge happened unexpectedly on day 11 of her cycle. She and her husband had intercourse immediately upon her return home on day 13. She swears that catching the very start of her LH surge (she performed ovulation tests every 4 hours while traveling due to concerns about how time changes would effect her body) as well as staying extremely hydrated (drinking lots of water with Emergen-C for the electrolytes) were the keys to her getting pregnant. She blamed leaving the meeting she was attending early on a “family emergency” keeping the fact to herself that it was really a “family making” emergency that caused her early flight home. In her words, “I was forty-two years old and likely only had a handful of chances to get pregnant left. I wasn’t going to miss out on one last baby due to a work conference. I knew I needed to make every opportunity I had remaining count since you never know which cycle will be the cycle where everything lines up properly.” The result was her third child.

Maria on the other hand had intercourse really early morning on day 13 of her cycle before hopping on a plane for a business trip across the country. She knew her LH surge usually happened in the afternoon on day 13, so she was just hoping that the sperm would be able to survive long enough and that her surge would take place as usual. She did detect her surge – in the airplane restroom shortly before landing - and she increased her chances of the sperm making it to her egg despite the dehydration associated with travel by drinking loads of water, with at least 4 bottles a day augmented by Emergen-C. She also credits weekly acupuncture treatment along with herb tea for having perfect cervical fluid for protecting the sperm. The result was her second child!

Monitoring your Waking Body Temperature

Monitoring your basil body temperature (BBT) is the second most important of our tips for getting pregnant. BBT testing involves measuring your waking body temperature. During the first half of our cycle before ovulation, our waking body temperature will be in the 97 (Fahrenheit) degree range (usually between 97.0 and 97.5). After you ovulate it will increase to somewhere in the 98 degree range (usually from 97.6 to 98.6) with a jump of.4 of a degree or more. If you become pregnant your temperature will likely rise and additional 0.3 to 0.4 degrees once implantation has taken place.

Measuring your LH surge tells you when you are likely to ovulate. Measuring BBT’s tells you when ovulation has occurred. The two together tell you when your fertile window opens and when it has closed!

Your BBT is best measured first thing in the morning before you even get out of bed. It is optimal to measure it at the same time each morning using a thermometer specifically for measuring BBT since they are more sensitive than regular thermometers.

Many busy working women wonder why they should bother with measuring their waking body temperature. Here’s why it is a good idea, it provides you valuable information about if and when you ovulate. When you combine this information with monitoring for your LH surge you get a complete picture about what is going on with your reproductive cycle.

For example, your thermal shift should take place 1-3 days after your LH surge. When it occurs you know that you have ovulated and you can start seeing patterns between when your LH surge occurs and how long after that you ovulate. Some women don’t ovulate for 4-5 days after their LH surge. For those women, choosing to have intercourse 48 or more hours after their LH surge will give them a better chance of getting pregnant.How is that in terms of sneaky tips for getting pregnant?

Another reason that it makes sense to measure BBT is because women experience shorter LH surges as they get older. Therefore, you may miss seeing your LH surge. If you see your daily temperatures make a shift, then you know that you likely missed seeing your LH surge (even though it did occur) and you know when you ovulated (from the temperature shift). Alternatively, if you see your temperatures jump up and down throughout you cycle, you know something else is going on and that you didn’t ovulate that month.

Here is a great article with more information about HOW to measure your BBT’s .

Get a FREE Cycle Tracking Chart

Tips for getting pregnant: Our favorite way to measure temps is vaginally since sleeping with your mouth open versus closed can cause changes in temps unrelated to ovulation. When we are doing the thermometer thing, we can also check our cervical fluid and cervical position as discussed next.

Monitoring Cervical Fluid

This is one of the tips for getting pregnant you won't typically learn from your doctor.  To get an even clearer picture of your cycle, it is a good idea to chart your cervical mucus and your cervical position at the same time you chart your temperatures. Why? It is quick and easy as we will describe below and it provides you additional information to help you target the best time to have intercourse or to identify why you might not be getting pregnant so you can do something about it.

Cervical fluid is produced by the hormone estrogen in the first phase of your monthly cycle. It is secreted from the cervix. The quality of your cervical fluid is important because it is what keeps sperm alive for up to five days after entering your vagina. Your cervical fluid protects sperm from the acidity in your vagina and transports the sperm to the outer wall of the fallopian tube where fertilization takes place.

Your cervical fluid will change during your monthly cycle starting off as sticky or gummy, becoming creamy and then becoming abundant, clear and stretchy (the consistency of egg whites). It is when it is the consistency of egg whites that you are the most fertile, because the egg white consistency provides the safe highway sperm need to make it up to your fallopian tubes and inseminate your recently released egg.

After the egg is released the drop in estrogen you experience coupled with the increase in progesterone following ovulation will cause your cervical fluid to return to the dry, watery or sticky state you should have noticed at the start of your cycle.

Monitoring Cervical Position

The same way your cervical fluid changes during your cycle, the position and opening of your cervix will also change.

Your cervix will start out in a low position in your vagina with the cervix itself feeling hard (like the tip of our nose) and closed. As your estrogen levels peak, your cervix will rise (making it harder to reach when you insert your finger into your vagina) and become soft (like your lower lip or earlobe). The opening of our cervix will get larger so it feels like a hole. For women that have never had children, the hardest thing may be to find the hole since it is smaller before dilating for childbirth.

When your cervix is high, soft and open, you are at your most fertile time. Your cervix will remain high and soft until you ovulate after which it will return to its low, closed and hard position. We think of this position as “closed for business” .

Putting it all together

At this point you are probably imagining that you are going to be spending your entire day trying to figure out when you are most fertile. Not so! To do everything we have described:

• Test your urine to detect your LH surge
• Measure Basal Body Temperature
• Check Cervical Fluid
• Check Cervical Position

You only need to spend 3-4 minutes in the morning with your BBT thermometer and BBT chart followed by another 3 minutes in the afternoon with your fertility monitor to test your urine.

Here is the most effective way we have found to learn about and document our fertility status. Why should you document the factors above? So that you can review past months to see trends, identify issues and predict when to have intercourse should you miss seeing your LH surge.

For older women in particular, this is one of our most important tips for getting pregnant because the LH surge gets shorter and weaker. Combine that with having drunk a lot of water in the afternoon and it is easy to miss seeing your LH surge. If you do miss it, your temps and cervical fluid and position will tell you if you ovulated and when you should try to have intercourse.

Now putting all of these tips for getting pregnant together, here is what you need to do. First thing in the morning (preferably at the same time every day) after you wake up and before you get out of bed, grab your BBT thermometer, turn it on (if digital) and insert it into your vagina. When it beeps (or after 5 mins have passed for the older style thermometers) take it out and document your temperature on your cycle chart.

Set the thermometer aside and insert your fingers into your vagina and feel for your cervix. Notice how far your finger needs to go in to reach it as well as how hard or soft it is. Can you feel the opening? If so, how large is it? As you feel for the hole, you will be also collecting some cervical fluid on your finger.

Withdraw your finger out of your vagina and inspect the fluid. Rub your finger against another to access how slippery it is. Does it feel wet or dry? Thick or thin? Sticky or creamy? Is it abundant or is there just a little? Pull your fingers apart and see if it stretches.

We want to stress here that there are no “perfect answers” when it comes to tips for getting pregnant. The point is you need to educate yourself about your body and your cycle. After doing this for two months you will know exactly what your cervix and fluid feels like during the various stages of your cycle. At the start, don’t look for the perfect answer, focus instead on being super observant and an documenting what you are noticing.

Document your results

You will use a new cycle chart each menstrual cycle. Day one on your chart should correspond to the first day of your period. Not the first day of spotting, but the first day where your period starts.

Enter the actual date and month on the row where provided. Document your temperature reading in the correct column. Enter your cervical fluid and cervical position where indicated. If this sounds complicated, it isn’t after doing it a few times, this whole process should take less than 5 minutes. We want our tips for getting pregnant to be empowering, not impossible! Going back to our analogy, you are assessing whether your fluid highway is facilitating smooth swimming for sperm and your cervix open for business.

All that remains is for you to collect some urine and use your fertility monitor to test it during the time you have set into your monitor by following your monitor’s instructions. If you are doing manual testing, then simply collect a little urine (2pm in the afternoon is best if you are testing only once a day, and insert a ovulation detection strip for the prescribed number of seconds before waiting the prescribed amount of time and documenting the results on your cycle chart.

If you are using this method, you may prefer the Excel version of our cycle chart (request above)as you can easily modify to include additional rows for additional ovulation tests at noon, 4pm, 8pm, etc.

That’s it, by doing the above every day for two months, you will have a whole lot of information about your cycle that you can give your Acupuncturist to turbo-charge your chances of getting pregnant. These are the main things they need to customize your acupuncture treatment as well as to determine what herbs could help for your situation.

Before we talk about acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, lets first talk about the most important of our tips for getting pregnant - eat for a healthy pregnancy.

Diet to Increase Your Chances of Getting Pregnant

The next of our tips for getting pregnant is to improve your diet. Perhaps you are currently consuming the very best foods for getting pregnant, but that is unlikely. To get pregnant and maintain a healthy pregnancy, you need at least 80-100 grams of protein per day. You also need to consume a lot more healthy fats (omega 3) and cholesterol (egg yolks) than you are likely to be currently consuming.

In addition, you should ensure that at least 80% of what you eat is organic, free range and unprocessed food. The hormones, antibiotics and other toxins present in conventionally raised and grown foods are harmful to both your health and efforts to get pregnant. For example, meat raised in the US by conventional methods has hormones (estrogen) and antibiotics in it as well as toxins from the pesticides in the feed the animal consumes. Corn-fed and Soy-fed beef, in particular, consume large quantities of genetically modified corn and soy. Of all of our tips for getting pregnant, this is the one your doctor is lest likely to discuss with you. For more information about why you want to avoid genetically modified foods, especially while you are pregnant or trying to get pregnant read The Case for Banning Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) . You should also read How to Avoid Genetically Modified Foods a great article packed with tips for HOW to avoid GMO’s. For information about research that demonstrates the dangers of GMO’s read The Health Risks of GM Foods: Summary and Debate

You should also minimize your consumption of soy products as that will also result in a detrimental estrogen-to-progesterone balance. Of all our tips for getting pregnant, this may be the one that is least talked about. If your estrogen-to-progesterone balance is not optimum, you uterus will not have a nice thick lining for a fertilized egg to attach to. This will make a huge difference when it comes to conceiving and birthing a healthy baby.

To read exactly what you should eat and how much, read Healthy Pregnancy Diet . It should be no surprise that the diet you should follow to get pregnant is exactly the same as the diet you should follow while you are pregnant.

Acupuncture for Pregnancy

Of all our tips for getting pregnant, this one is the most effective one for ensuring your ovaries are releasing strong healthy eggs as well as for helping to regulate an irregular cycle. A good acupuncturist will be able to stimulate your ovaries, ensuring the production of a healthy, mature egg to be fertilized as well as even out your cycle so that it is more predictable.

If you are over 35 or have an irregular cycle, the fastest way we have found to get pregnant is to invest in acupuncture. We highly recommend you get yourself an appointment with the most highly recommended acupuncturist in your area. To find an U.S.A based acupuncturist who specialized in fertility, check the Clinical Excellence in Fertility Professionals (CEFP) website.

Of our tips for getting pregnant, this is especially important if you have been taking birth control pills for any length of time. Birth control pills cause your body to stop releasing mature eggs. Over time, this causes the ovaries to get lazy from lack of use so that they will often either not release an egg or release an immature egg that isn't capable of leading to a successful pregnancy.

Are you aware you have a reproductive issue? One of our most important tips for getting pregnant is that Acupuncture help women with all kinds of problems get pregnant quickly and without pharmaceutical drugs and untested new processes. Specifically acupuncture will help if you have been told you have:

• Thin Uterine Lining
• Blocked Fallopian Tube(s)
• Poor Egg Quality
• High FSH
• Endometriosis
• Ovarian Cysts and PCOS
• An unexplained reason for being unable to get pregnant

New York City based Acupuncturist, Eileen Chen ) , a very successful fertility treatment specialist, describes how acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine helps best on her Infertility Q & A . While you are there, check out the testimonials from her patients (bottom of page) .

For more information about studies that have been conducted that demonstrate that acupuncture improves fertility as well as lowers miscarriage rates, check out these Fertility Research Articles . Kim Silsby , a Bay Area, California acupuncturist that Arrington highly recommends, has a great write-up that describes the results (in plain English)of many of the recent studies on acupuncture for improving fertility .

If you can’t afford acupuncture, or if the thought of needles is just too terrifying, a less, but still effective way you can benefit (tips for getting pregnant), is to do acupressure to stimulate the same points and meridians often used during acupuncture treatments. There is a great DVD (around $20) you can buy that takes you thru this step by step called Acupressure for Fertility or consider purchasing an ebook like The Maternity Acupressure Guide .

Chinese Herbs for Getting Pregnant

While we aren’t big proponents of taking any kind of medication, the Chinese culture takes their research into herbs very seriously, therefore we are including them in these tips for getting pregnant. For a deeper discussion about herbs for getting pregnant, consider purchasing our eBook (top right of this page). Herbs together with acupuncture have been their primary tools for keeping their population healthy for thousands of years. Now, even after they have employed western medical practices in addition to traditional Chinese medicine in china, they still rely on herbs and acupuncture as their primary forms of treatment for infertility.

Unfortunately due to China’s tremendous trouble with pollution, particularly of all their major waterways, you need to be careful about purchasing Chinese herbs from China. Fortunately, there are many varieties used by astute acupuncturists around the world that are grown in China but are certified to be free of pesticides, heavy metals and other contaminants. They may cost more, but in terms of tips for getting pregnant, the price is worth the piece of mind.

We only recommend taking herbs under the supervision of someone educated in Traditional Chinese Medicine because determining which herbs need to be used is a highly individualized process. Worse yet, taking the wrong herbs or the right herbs at the wrong time in your cycle can actually prevent you from getting pregnant.

Our Final Tips for Getting Pregnant - Reduce Stress, Read & Reach Out

Our final tips for getting pregnant.

Reduce your stress levels

One of the major reasons that women do not get pregnant after following all of the advice already presented is stress. Sue-Ann Hickey points out, “Stress is cumulative. It is not necessarily the big stresses that are damaging, but more the accumulation of small stresses in our daily lives. This chronic stress can lead to serious illnesses.”

Visit her website www.health-and-natural-healing.com for great stress management tips that will help you become healthier and make it easier for you to get pregnant

Read

Read about how to get pregnant in your free time. You may not be a law-of-attraction type of person, but all of us have noticed how the things we focus on, both good and bad, tend to happen. An empowering book to help you focus on getting pregnant that has become our favorite is Taking Charge of your Fertility by Toni Weschler.

We cover alot of information about getting pregnant, having a healthy pregnancy, and childbirth on this site. Many of our visitors have requested that we create an ebook to make it easier for them to read thru the information when they are not online. We are pleased to be able to offer over 130 pages of our best advice that you can purchase and download now.

Buy Natural Pregnancy and Childbirth Advice eBook

Reach Out

Visit our Natural Conception Forum to ask your questions and to read tips for getting pregnant and stories about how other women have gotten pregnant. Sign up for our Natural Newsletter, (top right of this page) so that you receive all of the latest information about getting pregnant and pregnancy. Sign up for our RSS feed (top left of this page) to have all the latest information delivered directly to you.

We hope our tips for getting pregnant help you become pregnant soon!

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