Hoping to get pregnant?  Here’s your checklist of what to do:

Stop using birth control.

Get off anything long term or hormone based and give your body time to adjust.  You’ve probably spent a lot of years going out of your way to NOT have a baby, so getting ready to try to have one is both a mental and physical adjustment.  Welcome to the weird transition from “please please don’t let me be pregnant” to “please please let me get pregnant.”  It takes getting used to.

Do “responsible healthy person things”

After sometimes a decade of occasionally treating your body like a $8 skirt from H&M, why not take care of the thing that you’re hoping will carry another human being into existence?  If you smoke?  Maybe don’t do that anymore.  If you haven’t been to a doctor in 3 years, maybe you should get on that.  If you drink your bodyweight in caffeine every day, bad news-- there’s a chance that may lower your ability to conceive in addition to making you totally wired. You know how to be healthy. Now is a great time to start!

Count the Days of Your Menstrual Cycle

We’re not asking for the radius of a circle or the Pythagorean Theorem but get ready to do some basic math.  In a 28 day cycle you ovulate (most likely) on day 14.  Mark down the first day of your next period.  Count back 16 days from that day.  Have that date in your head?  Great.  You’ll probably ovulate up to five days after that day.  Now find the square root of 49 and the area of a rectangle and if a train leaves Chicago traveling at 100 mph and another train leaves New York at the same time traveling at 130 mph, you will get pregnant (hopefully) someday, minus 31 times 6, plus infinity.  Let us check our math. Alternatively, use Glow. We have proprietary algorithms that do all the lifting for you and pinpoint your fertile window with amazing accuracy.  

Check Your Cervical Mucus

Yes, there’s a purpose to that stuff.  When you’re ovulating your cervical mucus turns your vagina into a beautifully lush sperm Biodome where those tadpoles can live for up to five days.  Test it with your hands to see if it’s stretchy like an egg white, which means you’re probably fertile.  Then wash your hands because touching it will feel like the grownup, reproductive equivalent of picking your nose.  (The things we do to get pregnant, amirite??)

The Tons of Sex Step

If you plan on getting pregnant via a male partner - have tons of sex!  Tons!  What’s that, you have a full time job and your vagina is getting sore?  Ok, here’s some help.

- Have sex before you start ovulating. Sperm can survive for up to five days in there so when your egg shows up the sperm will already be there like one of those guys in the airport with your last name on a sign.  

- Skip the lube.  Lube can kill sperm.  Tell your partner to skip the hot tubs.  Hot tubs can kill sperm. Tell your partner not to keep his laptop on his lap or his cell phone in his front pocket. Tell your partner not to keep his laptop on his lap during sex as that kills the mood and is also kind of weird/acrobatically challenging.  

- Bring on the romance. Seriously, try not to schedule sex, schedule romance instead. See a movie. Go for a night stroll. Have dinner with candle light. Do all the things you will never again have time for when you actually do have a baby!

Try Not to Stress Out About Getting Pregnant

Stress rarely helps anything.  Will you sometimes get stressed out about not being pregnant when you’re trying?  OF COURSE, YOU WILL.  But if you have things in your life that help you manage stress (massage, yoga, Netflix binges, herbal teas) do whatever helps keep you sane.

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