Are you ready to start a family? Or maybe you’re looking to expand the one you already have? Deciding it’s time to have a child is an exciting chapter in your life.
When things don’t go as you imagined they would, it can also be a frustrating time. Planning and being well-informed can give you the best leg up when it comes to getting pregnant.
Are you looking to increase your chances of getting pregnant quickly? In this guide, we will help you skip the frustrating parts of trying to conceive and get you to your end goal as fast as possible.
How Quickly Can I Get Pregnant
Interested in knowing the averages for how long it takes to get pregnant? Following are the rates of women who conceive naturally within a year of trying, broken down by age.
Women aged 20 to 24 have an 86 percent chance.
Women aged 25 to 29 have a 78 percent chance.
Women aged 30 to 34 have a 63 percent chance.
Women aged 35 to 39 have a 52 percent chance.
Women aged 40 to 44 have a 36 percent chance.
Women aged 45 to 49 have a 5 percent chance.
There is no hard and fast rule for how long it takes to get pregnant, however. This is just a snapshot of the odds. Every woman and every couple is different.
Age: There’s not a strict time limit on when you’re able to conceive easily, but it is likely to happen more quickly when you’re younger. Working with a fertility specialist? You’ll likely find they’re willing to let you try without medical intervention longer, up to a year when you’re younger. When you’re 35 years old and above, they typically want to intervene at the six-month mark.
Health: Your overall health will play a big role in how quickly you’re able to conceive and how easy your pregnancy will be. You should plan on eating right and exercising and know that being underweight can impact conception just as easily as being overweight can. Plan on drinking less or having no alcohol, and to stop smoking.
Reproductive health: While your general health will be a factor in your ability to conceive, your reproductive health will matter too. For women, irregular periods can indicate underlying reproductive issues. If you have reproductive health concerns, contact your doctor.
How to Get Pregnant Fast
1. Get a preconception checkup.
Before you officially start trying, get a checkup. Ask your doctor about prenatal vitamins that have folic acid, which helps protect against some birth defects, such as spina bifida. Folic acid works during the early stages of pregnancy, so that’s why it’s important to make sure you’re getting enough folic acid even before you get pregnant. “If you have any underlying medical problems, they need to be under control before you can safely become pregnant.”
2. Get to know your cycle.
Knowing and understanding your monthly cycle is one of the most important things you can do to increase your chances of conception.
The sooner you begin charting your cycle, the better. You’ll have more data points and a better understanding of when you’re likely to conceive.
Many women operate on a 28-day cycle, which will give you about five to six days a month when you are the most fertile.
To chart your fertility window, you’ll need to know the day your last period started. This is day 1 of your cycle.
Paying attention to your body can help clue you into where you are in your cycle. Tracking your basal body temperature is a great place to start but it’s not the only thing your body can tell you about your fertility.
You can help anticipate when you’ll be ovulating by paying attention to how your cervical mucus changes throughout your cycle. If you notice you are experiencing more vaginal discharge than usual especially if it’s watery and stretchy you may be near ovulation.
Ovulation test strips are also available and can help make determining your fertility window a little easier.
3. Do sex at the right time
Knowing when you’re ovulating and therefore fertile is the first step. Having sex during that window of fertility is the second.
Having sex before your expected ovulation can help account for any variation in when you ovulate. Sperm can also live in the body for several days having some already in action can help increase your likelihood of conceiving.
Once you ovulate, there are only 12 to 24 hours for your egg to meet the sperm. If you know when you’ll be ovulating, you can have sex before ovulation. This can help ensure some of the slow-moving sperm will get to the egg on time.
If the sperm reach their final destination when you aren’t fertile, they won’t hang around. Have sex after ovulation to increase the odds for some of those fast-moving sperm to meet up with your egg.
Don’t forget to enjoy the process as you go along this wild ride. Stress doesn’t help with fertility so avoid the robot sex if at all possible. Orgasms improve the likelihood that sperm will successfully journey to your egg.
4. Eat Healthy food
Eating healthy food is crucial at every stage of life. The kind of food you eat affects your overall health. Healthy food keeps you healthy, whereas junk food and packed foods make you lazy and do not have any benefits. It is important to eat fresh food and totally avoid junk and packed food during or before planning a pregnancy.
Try to eat a balanced diet that includes green leafy vegetables, fresh fruits, unpolished rice, whole grain cereals, etc. If you are non-vegetarian, you can eat oil and spice-free fish and meat. Avoid snacks and soft drinks.
5. Avoid smoking and drinking.
If you are someone who drinks and smokes and if you are also planning for pregnancy or even if you are not, stop it today. Smoking and drinking are two bad habits for all of us. All the toxic contents in cigarettes and alcohol destroy the eggs quickly and reduce your fertility gradually. Decreasing the eggs, it decreases the chances of you getting pregnant.
Also, if your husband smokes, ask them to quit it as they also expose you to it and make you a passive smoker. Smoking has terrible effects on both the eggs and the sperm.