How long does it take to get pregnant?

This is not a silver-bullet solution, but a real world account of what it takes to become pregnant, and what can be done to increase the chance of having a happy and healthy baby (and parents).

Sunday 27 January 2008

How long does it take to get pregnant?



How long does it take to get pregnant? Being a typical clueless man, I thought my wife was being funny when she asked me. But I’ve now found out that contrary to popular belief, there is a lot more to becoming pregnant than just an act of passion between would-be mummies and daddies.

This all started when my beautiful bride Meagan (or Megs as I call her) and I decided that we would have a baby. I have learnt a lot about pregnancy and children that, as a man, I didn’t know. For example, I discovered that while I had been thinking about kids since we had been married in October 2007, Megs had been thinking about having kids since she was 12. So lets just say that I had a lot to catch up on.

Wanting to be a supportive husband and father I began to look at the subject of pregnancy with fresh eyes.

I finally found this great book called The Personal Path to Pregnancy.

The main thing I found in there is that there is no silver-bullet that works in every couple. All you can do is look at all of the different areas that affect pregnancy and works towards a successful conception.

The five areas are:

1. The time taken the contraceptive pill to become ineffective after it has stopped being taken. Did you know that there is less than a 25% chance of conception after the first month?

2. Monitoring Ovulation (for the mans, this is when the egg is released). This is an amazingly difficult thing to predict with any level of accuracy. But given the tools we have learnt our predictions have gone from a national lottery to insider trading.

3. You just can’t rush nature. Being a control freak, this was a hard lesson for me to learn. Some things just can’t be forced or rushed through. And pregnancy is one of those things. Understanding this alone has allowed us both to relax and just enjoy the process, rather than it feeling like this was something I need to clear from my to do list. If there was one thing I could suggest, this is it.

4. Being prepared really helps! Now being a know-it-all, I assumed that this was only meant for the soon-to-be mother. Even when Megs lovingly suggested that I needed to be fitter and reduce or eliminate coffee and alcohol I thought she was just asking for support for her own dietary changes. Well, I found I was wrong on this as well. There are a whole range of effects the father has on the quality of the sperm and other side effects.

5. Be happy. Now when I read this one I thought I had entered the twilight zone or something. But as it turns out, it is really important, particularly for the mother to stay calm and relaxed. One reason is that stress and increased blood pressure is passed on to the baby, and this is not a great environment. So it’s important for the mother to continue to do the things that relax them and bring them happiness and don’t compromise the health and wellbeing of the baby. And the father can also assist here in helping relieve some of the stress in helping manage the household, and also creating calm in the home.

So as I said earlier, How long does it take to get pregnant is not a one sentence answer. And there are a whole lot more to look into such as diet, exercise, sexual positions etc. that I haven’t touched on here. If your interested in that book you can find the details here. It’s really well written and the free email newsletter they send out is excellent. So check it out for that if nothing else.

Megs and I are well on our way to conceive and I am just so happy to know that as a soon-to-be dad there is stuff I can do to help along the process and participate.

I look forward to reporting back with some good news in the next few months. And please feel free to leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you.




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