Things I Wish I Did Before Getting Pregnant
And the things I did do | A pregnancy Q+A
Please note that I am not a medical professional and everything I am sharing is anecdotal. I promise not all my content will be pregnancy related - a Spring Fashion newsletter is up next!
These questions came from a question box on Instagram and I hope the answers are helpful!
Was it difficult to get pregnant and do you have any tips?
I was lucky to get pregnant quickly, which you obviously never know will happen until you try. My husband and I both took fertility tests earlier last year with the view to start trying in the Autumn / Winter and the results came back all good. If there had been abnormalities, we probably would have started sooner, expecting it to take longer or addressed the issues however we could have to improve our chances when trying.
I’d read a somewhat outdated, but nonetheless useful book, The Impatient Women’s Guide To Getting Pregnant. Amongst lots of ‘oh your husband will be so excited to have sex all the time’ it had useful tidbits. The most important being (which is somewhat general knowledge so forgive me if this sounds patronising) that it’s the sex you have before you ovulate that is essential if you’re wanting to get pregnant. Once you’ve ovulated, it’s pretty much too late. Often people use ovulation sticks, see they’re ovulating and then have sex, but the egg is already well on its way and there’s no sperm to meet it. As sperm can live for up to five days it’s the pre-ovulation sex that matters for conception. Again, sorry if this is well-known, but speaking to friends it seems it’s not!
Following my period restarting post-coil I’d wanted to get a good understanding of my cycle so I used temperature tracking with my Oura Ring and Natural Cycles, which is pretty fascinating. Ovulation is only confirmed after the fact, so it’s best to track for a few months first to understand your cycle.*
To be honest, just paying attention to changes in cervical mucus (awful word, apologies) gives such a big indicator as it changes so much pre, during and post ovulation.
I can see how tracking and trying can become quite obsessive and taxing, particularly as the woman, so it’s worth being mindful of that. We were supposedly taking a month off ‘trying’ in the month I did get pregnant, so I guess we were being more relaxed and typically that is the month it happened!
*When you find out you’re pregnant, it’s counted from the first day of your last period so typically you find out when you’re already at four weeks. It can be helpful to know when you ovulated because if you have a long/short cycle or early/late ovulation then this can help paint a more accurate picture of your due date later down the line.
How far along are you?
I’m somewhere between 40-50% of the way through depending on when I give birth and how you measure it. Definitely past the first trimester, but not feeling the promised glow of the second just yet…! I’m probably not as far as people think because of the size of my bump, but everyone’s bump is so different!
I do think that no one has every element easy, and by that I mean conception, pregnancy, birth and breastfeeding. We’ve been lucky with conception and the health of the baby thus far so I will take a more challenging pregnancy. Especially if it means I have an amazing birth (and baby)!
