Thinking of trying to conceive and want to increase chances of conception? To maximise your chances of having a healthy baby, start planning for conception at least 3 months beforehand.  Not only will this make conception easier, it will also help you have a healthy baby with no birth defects. Some good ideas to get started are listed below.  Following some of the tips here will help ensure you have a healthy baby and reduce the chances of any birth defects.

See your GP for Advice to Increase Chances of Conception:

• Have a pap smear
• Explore getting immunized against chicken pox. Contracting chicken pox not only puts you at risk during pregnancy, it can also cause serious birth defects.
• Get your immunity for Rubella checked. While most women where immunised against Rubella at school, by the time you decide to have a baby your immunity might be low. Your GP can check this by doing a simple blood test and immunise you again if you need it.  However, if you have had a rubella shot, you should wait at least 3 months before conceiving.

Increase chances of conception by:

• Stopping smoking – both you and your partner
• Reduce your alcohol intake
• Adopt some natural holistic treatments to prime your body for conception

Take Vitamin Supplements:

• Take at least 500mg of folic acid a day.  This is particularly important in the 12 weeks leading up to conception as well as the 12 weeks following conception. Why?  Folic Acid reduces the risks of  developing neural tube defects that could affect the development of your baby’s brain and spine.  Folic acid can also be found in brocoli and in green leafy vegetables such as spinach.
• Start charting your your menstrual cycle so you start to understand the most likely times when you are ovulating.

See your dentist:

• Have your much needed check-up befor you start trying to conceive.  Remember, x-rays are not advised when you are pregnant so why not get checked out sooner rather than later.

Click here to find some more great tips to help you get pregnant and help increase chances of conception

If you are thinking of having a baby, here are some tips on getting pregnant. Firstly, you should putt some planning into it before you actually conceive.  Some key considerations prior to getting pregnant are your general health, your relationship, and your finances.  By focusing on these aspects of your  life you may find everything runs a little smoother and you have a lot less stress later on.

Twelve Months Before

Start considering private health insurance.  If you go into the private health system, you will need to be insured for at lest 12 months before you actually get pregnant.

Six Months Before

If you are underweight, overweight or obese, you might want to start trying to achieve a healthy weight.  If you fall outside your healthy weight range, your ability to conceive may be hindered.

You should also start thinking about the risks associated with getting pregnant – particularly if you are older.  Having a baby at age 40 means you have a one in ninety chance of having a baby with Down Syndrome while at age 35 the risk decreases to one in 355.

There is also a risk that you could be one of the 15% of couples who have trouble conceiving.  Talk to your partner about how you both might handle that if it this were to occur.

Money pressures can also be a major source of stress in relationships.  It is therefore a good idea to discuss how you’ll both manage with less money.  Perhaps it is worth saving some money for the future.

It also worth considering if you both want to have a child together at the same time. Often, one person might want a child sooner than the other so its essential to ensure you both on the same page.

The irony is that usually you spend years trying to avoid a pregnancy only to find that it doesn’t always happen as quickly as you first imagined.  As you continue down this path, the efforts you both take towards trying to achieve pregnancy can be stressful.

Finally, in the six months leading up to your planned conception attempts, its a good idea to have a check up.  Tell your doctor about your plans and any possible health problems, your own or hereditary, that may affect your ability to conceive or achieve a pregnancy.

For more tips on getting pregnant, check out this amazing book that has some suprising information on improving fertility.

Preconception Advice

If you are thinking about getting pregnant in the near future, some preconception advice is to get your body right for conception before you actually conceive.

For women, it pays to visit your GP for a general health check up. Women should also start taking folic acid supplements and make dietary adjustments so the food consumed contains lots of folate. This supplement is crucial in the pre-conception and conception phases as it helps prevent neural tube defects such as spina bifida developing in your unborn baby.

Now would also be a good time to start thinking about stopping habits such as smoking and at the very least limiting your alcohol and caffeine consumption. Smoking more than 10 cigarettes a day can reduce your chances of conceiving by half. A high intake of caffeine can stop a fertilised egg from implanting into the uterus. So the best advice is plan your conception and start off the way you would mean to if you were pregnant.

More preconception advice can be obtained on our home page.