New Year’s Resolutions: How to Prepare for Pregnancy

When it comes to preparing for pregnancy, there are many factors to consider. While this can be a fun and exciting season of life, it’s important to consider factors such as nutrition, your mental and physical health, ensuring you are up to date on research and are also prepared to experience potential bumps along the way while trying to conceive.

So if you are trying to conceive and preparing for pregnancy, you’ve come to the right place. Our partner Robyn created a guide with tips on Nutrition, Mental and Physical Health, Research, and more. Use this list as your New Year’s resolutions to fully prepare yourself for the 2021 TTC journey.

1. Improve Your Diet

It’s important to know that there is no magic diet that will get you pregnant. However, you can control the nutrition going into your body, which can play a big factor when trying to conceive and preparing for a healthy pregnancy.

The tenets of the Fertility Diet are from a large, scientific study done at Harvard on diet and fertility. These five tips will help give you a better understanding of this diet and save you time from sorting through a number of different studies.

• Focus on Quality, Unprocessed Carbs
• Eat the Good Fats
• Include More Plant Based Proteins
• Yogurt, Cheese and Ice Cream…It’s Ok!
• Your Weight Matters

The Fertility Diet was ranked the #8 best diet overall by US News & World Report, even for those who are not trying to conceive.

There are many questions about what to eat when trying to conceive and nutrition advice for pregnancy. As we said before, unfortunately there’s no magical food that will get you pregnant, but enriching your body with these 10 powerful foods can help prepare you for pregnancy.

1. Beets
2. Oysters
3. Kombucha
4. Ginger
5. Sweet Potatoes
6. Persimmons
7. Cod liver oil
8. Almonds
9. Mushrooms
10. Ghee

Some of these foods may not be foods you have in your pantry or your fridge all the time, so don’t feel like you have to binge eat on cod liver oil or beets. Instead, eat what you can and try to incorporate as many of these as you can into your pre-pregnancy diet.

2. Take Prenatal Vitamins

Prenatal vitamins is one of the best things you can do for your body and nutrition when preparing for pregnancy. They can help reduce the risk of pregnancy complications, birth defects and chronic diseases for your future little one. We recommend looking for vitamins that have:

• Folic acid
• Iron
• Vitamin C
• Calcium
• Omega 3’s

Keep in mind you can take all of the prenatal vitamins in the world, but if you do not have a healthy diet to complement them it will not do much for you. Eat your veggies!

3. Track Your Cycle For Ideal Timing

Knowing when you ovulate is a must to get pregnant fast naturally. There are usually five to six days per cycle called your fertile window. These are the only days you can get pregnant, and only two of them are peak fertility days.

There are many methods women use to track ovulation cycles. Some well-known options are:

• ovulation predictor kits
• basal body temperature (BBT) method
• cervical mucus method
• ovulation calendars/calculators

Ovulation test kits (OPKs) are usually considered the most popular choice. However, drugstore OPKs can often give false results. They require a minimum amount of LH in your urine to produce a positive result. Every woman produces different amounts of LH during surges, so these tests easily produce false negatives.

Mira Fertility Plus is a game-changer. Unlike OPKs, Mira reveals actual numeric scores for both LH + Estrogen. With this information on hand, you won’t feel “in the dark” anymore. You’re able to constantly compare readings, make informed decisions, and gain access to your information within the App. With its proprietary algorithm, Mira will predict your ovulation over time and help you pinpoint your full fertile window.

4. Manage Your Stress and Emotions

Preparing for pregnancy can be an emotional and stressful rollercoaster ride, especially if your ride hits any bumps along the way. It’s important to remain optimistic and be sure you are not comparing yourself or journey to others. Being stressed while preparing for pregnancy, can make matters worse. In order to manage that stress, we recommend to consult your doctor, NOT Google if you have any questions. Also, trust yourself throughout this process, connect with others who are on the same journey as you and breathe every now and then!

5. Keep Your Relationship Strong and Healthy

When preparing for pregnancy, you never want to do it alone. It’s important to keep your relationships strong with your partner, keeping the sex alive! Also, lean on your friendships, whether they are in the same boat as you or not. These people want to be by your side throughout your whole experience. So, keep in mind to NOT push these people away. They want to be there for YOU!

Many couples try to conceive at the wrong time, simply because they don’t know when their most fertile days are. Researchers found that only 12.7% of women estimated their ovulation time correctly and only 55% of women estimated their ovulation within their fertile window. Mira tracks key fertility hormones concentrations to give you personalized insights into your cycle and maximizes your chances of getting pregnant.

6. Practice Fertility Yoga Poses

The stress of preparing for pregnancy can not only take a toll on your mental health, but your physical health as well. While exercising regularly is recommended to maintain a healthy lifestyle, it isn’t yoga. Without a doubt, yoga can really benefit you while preparing for your pregnancy. Why?

Fertility yoga poses and postures provide a highly balanced form of exercise that combines strength, stretching, and light cardio (in certain types of yogas). Yoga can help when preparing for pregnancy by:

• Providing relief from stress
• Increase blood circulation to your uterus and ovaries
• It is low impact
• Improves endocrine function
• Decreases inflammation
• Increases body awareness
• Yoga FEELS GOOD!

Keep in mind you don’t need to go into a yoga studio in order to do certain yoga movements. These movements can be done in the comfort of your own home.

7. Try Acupuncture

Acupuncture can be extremely helpful and beneficial when preparing for pregnancy, especially for any fertility-related problems such as PCOS, endometriosis, luteal phase defect, irregular cycles and amenorrhea. Acupuncture can also support women as they go through IVF and other assisted reproductive techniques. Acupuncture can help bring the body into balance and promote healing, making it a wonderful modality for women trying to conceive. It can also help reduce stress, which can positively affect hormone levels. It improves blood circulation to the pelvis, tissue repair, and muscle tone, all of which can have a positive effect on egg development and implantation.

8. Find Your Doctor or Fertility Specialist

When preparing for pregnancy, it’s important to  start looking into OB/GYNs. We recommend doing the best research you can, talk to your friends or acquaintances for any recommendations and go visit OB/GYNs in your area. Ask as many questions as you can, make sure you feel comfortable when talking to that doctor, and be sure their office is relatively close to where you live (you’ll be visiting  quite often!)

If you’re OB/GYN tells you to seek out a fertility specialist this can be a more challenging task. So, it’s important to do your research on this as well. Just like searching for an OB/GYN, we recommend taking word of mouth and recommendations into consideration and meeting with different specialists to see what they have to offer.

So, do your research and remember to keep an open mind going into this process. You know what’s best for you.

9. Find Your Maternal Wellness Tribe

Allowing yourself to find a tribe of women like you who have gone through the same thing can be very helpful and reassuring. You can do all of the healthy eating, exercise or acupuncture in the world, but we believe the most helpful side of your fertility journey will be finding your tribe who is going through the same thing as you. Your tribe will be people who are going through the same thing as you. Sure, you can talk to your friends, or your partner, but it isn’t until you find those who are going through the same thing as you that you’ll really feel at ease.

At Robyn marketplace not only has specialists who can help with your nutrition or medications on your fertility journey, but also those who can help you find your tribe.