Conception Myths: What Fertility Awareness Reveals About Timing Sex to Conceive (Episode 408)

Full Transcript: Episode 408

Lisa Hendrickson-Jack:

Welcome to the Fertility Friday Podcast, your source for information about the Fertility Awareness Method and all things fertility. I’m your host, Lisa Hendrickson-Jack. I’m the author of The Fifth Vital Sign and the Fertility Awareness Mastery Charting Journal. I’m a certified fertility awareness educator and holistic reproductive health practitioner with nearly 20 years of experience teaching women to connect to their fifth vital sign through menstrual cycle charting, balancing hormonal health, and optimizing the menstrual cycle without hormones. I’m outspoken about hormonal birth control and its impact on fertility and overall health because you have the right to know how your body works, and how artificial hormones disrupt that natural process. I teach women’s health professionals how to utilize the menstrual cycle as a vital sign in their practices, and I host live coaching programs to help you achieve optimal fertility and health, because it’s important to have healthy menstrual cycles regardless of whether or not you want to have babies. I’m also a wife and mother of two beautiful boys. I know, I’m a busy girl, but I managed to fit it all in. This podcast is designed to empower you to take full control of your cycles, your fertility, and your overall health. And I’m so excited that you’re here with me today.

Today I’m sharing another episode in this month’s Conception Series. Today I will be talking about four myths about conception. So this episode will help you to really utilize fertility awareness cycle charting for correct timing, and really get into some of those top myths of what to do and what not to do when you are trying to conceive. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode.

Today, I wanted to jump in and share my thoughts on some of the most common conception myths. I wanted to talk to you about how to use fertility awareness cycle charting when you’re trying to conceive. And if you’re not actively trying to conceive right now, I think this episode will be helpful for you if you’re thinking about conceiving in the future. But ultimately, over the past couple of months, I’ve had a number of conversations with clients, I’ve had a number of interviews and just conversations in general that made me really realize just how prevalent some of these myths are. So a little bit of background about me that some of you already know is that when I started charting, I was 18 or 19 years old. So having charted for most of my life, charted my cycles with fertility awareness, it meant that I never really had the opportunity to develop a lot of these common myths. And so sometimes, I suppose, in my case, I don’t even realize how prevalent they are. But it’s been brought to my attention. So we’re going to go ahead and dive in and talk about some of these things today.

And so now before I jump into the myths themselves, I did want to give some background about how fertility awareness cycle charting can be helpful with fertility. And certainly there are two main ways that charting can help you. One of the ways is of course accurate timing. So when you understand how your body works and your menstrual cycle works, then you can time sex accurately so that you can at least rule out the possibility that you’re not hitting the correct days. And then of course the other is when you’re charting your cycles and you’re learning more about your body and the connection between your body and your overall health and your menstrual cycle and everything, there is that potential to identify other issues that you wouldn’t have been able to otherwise know and see. And so this is really important because when I was even young, when I first learned fertility awareness as a concept, I remember thinking that timing and the rules only mattered when you’re trying to avoid pregnancy. I remember thinking that because I thought to myself, well, how could you screw it up? The whole thing when you’re trying to avoid pregnancy with fertility awareness is avoiding the fertile window. So you would think that it would be kind of impossible to get it wrong.

But what I see in today’s day and age is that many women, even though we have this kind of background increasing awareness about the menstrual cycle, we’re still operating from a rhythm method framework. And with that in mind, we’re still operating from okay, ovulation should be happening on day 14. And so regardless of how much you personally might know, the average woman out there who’s trying to conceive is often having sex on day 14 as part of her strategy to conceive. And so certainly there’s nothing wrong with having sex on day 14, right? Have sex whenever you want. But what can happen is that if you’re not charting and you’re not identifying your cervical fluid, you can ovulate earlier or later. And having sex on that day can be birth control depending on when ovulation is happening.

So one thing that I want to stress and kind of start with is the concept of a recipe for a healthy baby. And so when you are charting we can get really focused on kind of like the nuts and bolts — the sperm, the egg, and the mucus — and so we can really think that that’s all there is to it. But in terms of conception in the broader sense, in order to conceive, we do need to have healthy eggs, we need to have healthy sperm for natural conception, we need to have healthy cervical fluid, and we also have to have a healthy body. And so although cervical fluid is really important for conception, it’s not the only factor. And so I’ve seen women with amazing mucus who are hitting all the right days and not conceiving. And I’ve seen women who have no mucus because of an issue, whether it be that she took antihistamines that cycle or whether she just came off the pill and her body is just transitioning. But I’ve seen women that have no mucus but they’re still ovulating and they go on to conceive. And so I think this is a really important point here — that the timing is necessary. Obviously you need to have sex at the right time but when you are having sex at the right time cycle after cycle after cycle and it’s not happening, then there’s something more happening. That’s when we really need to be looking at his sperm quality, and we need to be looking at her overall health, and especially if you’ve been given a diagnosis of unexplained infertility, it’s time to seek care from a functional practitioner who looks deeper into the actual underlying issues that could be related.

And so the basics of charting, as most of you know, is that in the menstrual cycle, the first day of your menstrual cycle is the first day of your period, and once your period is done we typically have some what we call dry days before you start to see mucus, cervical fluid — so the clear stretchy or the lotiony. Some women will have mucus right away right off the bat. But either way, you have your period, typically dry days before you start to see mucus, and then you see mucus in a healthy cycle two to seven days before you ovulate. And then once you ovulate, the mucus typically goes away. So cervical fluid serves a number of really important roles for conception. One is that it tells us when to have sex. So because cervical fluid keeps sperm alive for up to five days, you don’t have to have sex on ovulation date in order to get pregnant. And I would say that’s a pretty big myth as well. So you want to time sex when you have cervical fluid as you approach ovulation. So the cervical fluid literally keeps the sperm alive. It sucks the sperm into your cervix, which is the base of the uterus, and holds it there for up to five days. So you can have sex on Monday one time, and if you ovulate on Friday, you could get pregnant because of the sex that you had that one time.

And so I think that’s really, really important just to know that, because what that means is that it’s not about having sex a thousand times. It’s not about trying to have sex on one day of the cycle because from a statistical scientific standpoint your fertile window is six days. Because the sperm can survive for five, you have the five days before ovulation and then ovulation only happens on one day in the month and once the egg is released if it’s not fertilized it disintegrates within 12 to 24 hours. So for some you may think of that as stressful because it’s not every single day — we’re all taught that you can get pregnant every day of the cycle, but it’s not. It’s just basically like a week, and that’s it. The other days you can have all the sex, but it doesn’t matter. So that can be stressful because you have to time it within that week. But on the other hand, it can be just amazing the relief that you don’t actually have to be having sex all the time in order to get pregnant. Like you can just figure out the window and have sex then.

And so when you’re charting your cervical fluid, you may see different kinds. So I mentioned the lotiony and I mentioned the clear stretchy, which is like the raw egg white. And so again, before ovulation, both of those types are equally fertile and not all women see a ton of the clear stretchy. I’ve had a number of clients who, as they approach the fertile window, they will notice when they go to the bathroom and wipe that for a couple of days, it’s really, really slippery. And that’s it. They don’t necessarily have a ton of mucus that they can pick up and stretch and play with and all of that. And so even knowing that and paying attention to the changes, even if you don’t have a lot of mucus, that is not what is going to determine whether or not you can conceive. Now, of course, ideally, you would have at least one day where you have the clear stretchy and you see it several times. But ultimately, the mucus does two important things. One is just timing. So mucus tells us when our follicles are developing. As the follicles develop they make estrogen. Estrogen is what triggers the cervix to make mucus. So it’s just timing. And it’s also telling you when the cervix is open. So you can have sex throughout your whole cycle, but it’s only during that short fertile window that the cervix is open and receptive to sperm. The rest of the time the cervix is actually closed and blocked with a mucus plug so the sperm can’t get in at all.

And so when you have mucus, it tells you that the cervix is open. So I use silly analogies like my bouncer in a nightclub analogy. So the majority of our menstrual cycles as women, the bouncer’s out front and no sperm are getting in. But during that short window of time is when the bouncer takes a lunch break and that’s the only time when the sperm can get in. So regardless of whether you see a little bit or a lot, regardless of whether you see the lotiony or whether you see the clear stretchy or whether you just notice that it’s really slippery and lubricative or you notice like a feeling of wetness in your underwear before ovulation, that is when you want to have the sex. And so the timing aspect of it is crucial. And then of course the other aspect of mucus is that healthy cervical fluid plays a really important role in screening out abnormal sperm. So even the healthiest man alive, about half of his sperm is not optimal, and so our cervical fluid actually screens out sperm that has poor morphology — so not properly shaped — or poor motility, meaning that it can’t swim properly and it basically is deformed. And so cervical mucus is key for a number of reasons, but again, it’s not the only factor.

So what this means though, is that it’s a fairly simple concept to understand, right? Like have sex when you see cervical fluid. But ultimately because of the years of indoctrination, of the expectation for ovulation to happen on day 14, of the expectation for the cycle to be 28 days, often, even though we kind of know this, we’re not necessarily acting in the way that we should. So the best advice that I can give you when you’re trying to conceive is once your period is basically done, start checking for cervical fluid however you’re doing that. So I encourage my clients to, when they’re going to the bathroom before and after they pee or have a number two, that they wipe so that they can actually see — does it feel slippery? Are they seeing anything? You can also pay attention to what you’re seeing on your underwear. When is it changing? And if you’re cycling normally, you should be able to see cervical fluid. There are certain situations that can be more challenging. So if you have uncontrolled PCOS, often women with uncontrolled PCOS — polycystic ovary syndrome — are told that they can’t conceive or that those kinds of things. But ultimately you can conceive in any cycle where you have ovulated. The challenge for women with PCOS — one of the most common ways that PCOS shows up in the menstrual cycle is long irregular cycles. So I’ve had a number of women with uncontrolled PCOS who I’m working with, before we start making some changes, where their cycles are 45 days and 50 days and that kind of thing. And so in a cycle of 50 days, you still have a six-day window. And so obviously then the challenge is identifying which days are fertile. And many women with PCOS will have lots of mucus — they may have it for weeks in a row or they may have multiple patches. So they’re going to see mucus, and then they’re going to not, and then they’re going to see it, and they’re going to not. So there’s all these possible days of fertility.

And from the standpoint of fertility awareness, you do want to consider all of those mucus days before ovulation to be potentially fertile, because they are. And so this is a challenge for women with PCOS. But you can approach that challenge twofold. One is to understand the role of mucus and to really start paying attention to your patterns so that you can identify those potentially fertile days, and another is to take the opportunity to start making changes to really normalize that menstrual cycle. Once the cycle is normalized and you get it down to 35 days or less overall, then you have way less of a long period of time to try. It becomes easier then to identify the fertile window because you don’t have weeks and weeks of mucus or multiple mucus patches as much. And then certainly when the cycle is down to 35 days, you have more opportunities to try. If your cycles are 60 days, you may only have a limited number of cycles in a year. But if your cycles are down to 35 days or less, then certainly you have more opportunities to try.

So that’s kind of like the overview. And now I want to talk a little bit about some of the specific myths that I’ve heard more about and just had conversations with clients and others recently. And so certainly a lot of women who are trying to conceive, if they go to their doctor, they’re told to have sex basically every other day or have lots of sex. And so this is a really interesting concept to me. When you don’t understand the biology, then that would make sense — have lots of sex. But in our lives, that puts a lot of pressure. There are couples that have sex every single day or multiple times a day and it’s one thing if you want to and you’re happy to have sex and you’re in that kind of lovey space that you want to do it all the time. But for many of us, that’s not the greatest thing ever to feel pressure to have that much sex. And so what I’ve seen is that this advice, while seeming to be either neutral or not potentially harmful, can put a lot of pressure on couples to have sex all the time. And it’s also not accurate because you’re not fertile all the time. So if you want to have sex all the time, have sex all the time. But if you’re trying to conceive, that can put a lot of pressure.

So one of the myths is that you need to have sex either every day or every other day for the entire cycle and when you are trying to have a baby, the more sex the better. Where’s the evidence that that’s true? So from the fertility awareness standpoint, if you’re charting your cycle and you start to understand when that fertile window is and you understand that from a scientific perspective there are six days of the cycle where sex is possible, and that’s because of the role of cervical fluid, then at very least what that can do for you is you can focus on those days.

And there’s something else — so I’ll just kind of go into another myth, which is that if you have sex multiple times a day, you’re just going to have multiple amounts of sperm or something like that. So having sex once might be good, but have sex five times to get five times as much sperm. So that’s a myth. The reason that it’s a myth is because men make sperm every day. So the fundamental difference between men and women as far as fertility goes is that men are fertile every single day because they continuously make sperm from puberty onward. And as women, we are fertile for, as I’ve said, six days per cycle. And so from that perspective, you know, the combined fertility is the six days. But men make sperm every day. But what that means is that when he ejaculates — let me back up a little bit. So men make sperm every day, but the process of spermatogenesis from beginning to end is approximately 74 days. That’s what it said in a research study that I quoted in The Fifth Vital Sign — but 74 days. So essentially three-ish months is how long it takes. So when your partner is ejaculating today, that is representing — you could say it’s a measure of his health, essentially three months ago. But there is a kind of a finite thing happening here because if he’s ejaculating the sperm that was produced or started to be produced three months ago, it means that if he ejaculates ten times in a day, eventually that actual amount of sperm that is coming out is going to be less. There’s no scientific basis to the concept that having sex multiple times is going to increase the amount of sperm that he’s going to have. Essentially, it’s an assembly line. And in that assembly line, a certain amount of sperm is made every single day. And so then when he’s ejaculating, it’s literally coming off the assembly line. And why we would think that ejaculating multiple times would cause way more sperm to be deposited — that shows a level of ignorance, I suppose, about the actual scientific process of spermatogenesis.

So what is the point in conclusion? The argument that having sex multiple times in a day when you’re trying to conceive is going to be beneficial is not scientifically sound from my perspective.

Okay, so let’s move on to another myth that’s kind of related to this. One of the most common questions that I get from my clients and from women in general who are trying to conceive is, “Should I be having sex every other day?” Because I’ve heard that having sex every other day will help with the sperm. So this actually gets into kind of more of the biological reality of the situation. So if anyone is listening whose partners have had their sperm tested — if your partner has ever been sent to have his sperm analyzed, you’ll remember that what they asked him to do is to hold off on ejaculation for anywhere from about three to five days before he takes the test. So meaning that he’s not masturbating and the two of you are not having sex for three to five days before he goes to get the test. And the reason — the thought process behind that is because since men make sperm every day and it’s an assembly line and there’s essentially a finite amount of sperm, if he holds off on ejaculation for three to five days, then what you have is you have a bit of a build-up. You have a higher concentration of sperm. And so when he does the test that way, he’s getting kind of like a better measure of the optimal concentration that he would have when you’re having sex. And so then it stands to reason that if he ejaculated like ten times in a day, then the amount, the concentration would be a lot lower the tenth time than the first time. That is where this idea of having sex every other day comes from. Because if you’re waiting a day in between, then certainly it gives the opportunity for a little bit more sperm to build up. And so when you do have sex, you’re getting a bit more bang for your buck in terms of sperm concentration.

So one thing I just want to say about this — so when my clients ask me about this, like, is this what I need to do? Should I have sex every other day? What I like to remind them is that the whole strategy of having sex every other day is actually intended potentially for when you have a situation where your partner’s sperm quality may not be that ideal. So it’s a strategy if you kind of know that the sperm count or quality is a bit lower to give you a better chance of having more in there. So your average 20-year-old man who’s trying to conceive, for example, there wouldn’t necessarily be a need to have sex every other day. So it doesn’t necessarily hurt, but it’s not necessarily something that every single couple has to do. And even that can put pressure on, especially if you’re charting your cycle and you see that the fertile window is like five days — let’s say you have mucus for five days and then you ovulate. Well if you have sex every other day, there’s only really kind of two, maybe three days that you can have sex on and it can kind of become complicated.

So what I suggest for my clients is that there’s kind of two ways to approach this. One way is if you’ve started charting and you’ve started to notice your patterns and you can kind of see how long after your period you start to see mucus and that kind of thing, certainly always be open to early mucus or late mucus, but you could have your partner hold off on ejaculation for the two to three days before you see your mucus and then you could have sex and that would allow for that kind of concentration to build up a little bit. And certainly you could skip a day or something like that. But don’t be so specific about the strategy that you’re making it stressful for yourself. Ultimately, the best advice is to have sex in the window. So when you see cervical fluid have sex, and certainly you can alternate a little bit, but I wouldn’t take it too far. Eventually I would just have sex all the mucus days and call it a day. But what you’ll notice about that recommendation — it still takes the pressure off from having to have sex every other day for weeks. It’s still having sex during the fertile window, which is about six days long.

So the bottom line is that it can be helpful to alternate during the fertile window. It can be helpful to wait a couple days before you start to see your mucus. It’s not helpful to wait more than four to five days. There is a point where it’s no longer helpful. It is helpful for men to ejaculate fairly regularly because they’re always producing new sperm. So holding off on ejaculation for three to five days before you start to see your cervical fluid is sufficient. We don’t need to necessarily take it further than that, because there are diminishing returns for waiting longer periods of time. So it’s not beneficial to wait six and seven days in between having sex, but waiting a few days can be helpful to build up the sperm concentration. And it doesn’t mean that he’s making more sperm — it just means that he’s making sperm on the assembly line every day and you’re basically just kind of collecting it and then releasing it. And so from that perspective then, it’s not harmful to have sex more than once a day if you want to — great. But it’s not that having sex three times means you have three times as much sperm in you ready. That’s not how it works.

So hopefully that is clear. And hopefully that helps to take off some of the pressure and stress. Because as I mentioned, I’ve been having a number of conversations about this with clients, with just women in general over the past several months. And part of the reason that I’m doing this episode is because it’s become quite clear to me that these types of strategies that doctors often tell people to do, kind of in passing and obviously not thinking that it could potentially be harmful, can put a lot of pressure on a couple. And so for a couple if you are in this boat — you know, maybe you’re resonating with this — that sex is no longer fun, it can feel like something you have to do. You’re doing it even if you don’t feel like doing it, even if you don’t feel sexy, you’re still doing it. And especially if you’ve been told that it’s helpful to have sex multiple times and to do that and to feel like you have to do that, in many ways, if you’re having sex on all the right days — so you’ve been charting, you know when you’re fertile, you’re having sex in the window — if you’re having sex in the window for more than six cycles and it’s not happening, having more sex is not necessarily going to make it happen. The reason that you’re not conceiving is not because you’re not having enough sex. And so those types of advice — just have more sex, or have sex multiple times a day, or whatever — can cause couples to focus on the wrong thing, putting all their energy into this, thinking it’s going to help, when perhaps what needs to happen is a deeper assessment into his health or her health or something else that’s really the actual problem. So for couples who are having fertility challenges, the issue is not typically that they’re not having enough sex. And that’s why I feel like it’s really problematic to follow these types of myths.

Another myth that I’ve talked about a lot on the podcast and with a lot of clients is the ovulation predictor kit. So the ovulation predictor kits are measuring for the luteinizing hormone surge. And so what happens when you’re approaching ovulation is that the follicles are developing. As the follicles are developing, preparing for ovulation, they’re making estrogen. That estrogen causes you to make mucus, it causes the endometrial lining to thicken, and it also causes ovulation. So once the estrogen reaches a certain point, it sends a feedback message to the pituitary gland. The estrogen levels — it’s like a thermostat in your house — the estrogen levels go up and then that tells the pituitary that it’s time for ovulation. And so the pituitary releases luteinizing hormone. Luteinizing hormone is the hormone that actually causes the ovarian follicle to rupture, and it is the trigger to forming the corpus luteum, which is formed after ovulation and which then produces progesterone, which is essential to maintain and establish pregnancy. So that luteinizing hormone surge is what the OPK — ovulation predictor kit — is testing for. And so that surge typically happens 24 to 36 hours before ovulation.

But ultimately, an OPK strip is a strip of paper that is programmed to give you a result when it detects a certain level of LH. So I’ve had clients who have ovulated based on the cycle information — temp shift, cervical fluid dries up — and the OPK never turned positive. And that means that for a certain percentage of women, they’re going to be waiting for this strip to turn positive, and it may not actually turn positive each cycle even if they’re ovulating. That’s a possibility. And there are other women who have elevated LH who are going to show a lot of positives and it may have nothing to do with ovulation. So ultimately the other kind of issue with OPKs is because it’s going to turn positive after the LH surge, you may be missing out on several days of perfectly excellent cervical fluid. And certainly I’ve worked with a number of women who have waited — so they wait until they get the positive to have sex — and so they’re not actually having sex necessarily on those mucus days leading up to the LH surge.

And so ultimately when you’re trying to conceive, my recommendation will always be that your mucus should be the primary sign. So have sex when you see mucus, start to get to know your cycles. And it doesn’t have to be super intense, but just pay attention to your cervical fluid. So if you’re finding cycle charting to be really stressful, stop taking your temperature. It might be strange coming from my mouth, but work with an instructor who teaches a mucus-only method. If it’s really getting stressful for you, focus on your mucus and pay attention to your cycle and your patterns and try to identify when you have mucus and let that be the sign. Have sex when you see mucus. If you’re doing the OPKs, then have that as an additional sign. So when it turns positive, have more sex, but certainly don’t wait until it turns positive — just in case you’re having several days of perfectly wonderful cervical fluid, fantastic days of fertility, before it turns positive. Don’t miss out on those days as well.

So those are kind of the main myths I wanted to talk about — the myth about having sex every other day all the time, or having sex every single day, or having sex multiple times, thinking that’s going to make it better. And then also the ovulation predictor kit myth that you should wait until it goes positive to have sex, which is also based on the myth that you need to have sex on ovulation day and that the whole cycle is about timing it on that one day. So those are all myths. Sex is possible from having sex once, four days before ovulation. It’s not about having more sex or trying to have sex directly on ovulation day. And if that is the one thing that you take from this episode, I hope that it is.

A second point that I’ve also alluded to and made is that if you are timing sex correctly cycle after cycle after cycle and it is not happening — pregnancy is not happening — you know, it’s been six cycles of you actually having sex in the window. And I don’t mean like any sex. I mean sex in the actual window, because there’s also plenty of couples who, maybe he’s traveling for work or something, and so you don’t actually have sex in the window, but because we’ve been told that you can get pregnant every single day of your cycle, even though you didn’t have sex in the window, you had sex at other times and you still kind of think that there’s a chance that you could conceive — without realizing that there isn’t, unless you actually had sex in the window. So yeah, all of those things are really important just to get those basic things down.

So why is this important? There’s a couple of key points that I just want to talk about. One is the importance of connecting with your partner. I’ve never worked with a woman who wanted to have a baby but didn’t care about the relationship or any of the rest of it — most of us want it all. We want to have a baby, and we want to have a healthy, wonderful relationship with our partners. And what some of these myths can do is make the whole process of trying so stressful and really take away the beautiful kind of nature of bonding that we have through sex with our partners. It can really make that a chore and turn it into something that we don’t want. And so my hope for you is that fertility awareness doesn’t become an additional burden but can actually help you to take the burden off. Fertility awareness has the potential — just charting and understanding when you’re fertile — to help take off the stress of feeling like you have to have sex all the time and every day and more sex the better and all of that, because it allows you to understand how your body works and allows you to understand that it’s not about how many times you have sex, it’s about having sex in the window.

And hopefully this can help for those of you who are trying to conceive to realize: I don’t have to have sex 50 times in my window. I don’t have to have sex like three times in the morning and two times in the afternoon. If I want to have sex, that’s great, but I don’t have to feel all of that pressure. You can have sex two, three times in your window and call it a day, ultimately, and be fine. I know that might sound completely opposite to what you’re doing or what you’ve been told, but it’s actually true. And over the years I’ve seen lots of charts — I’ve seen charts of women who’ve had sex one time in their window and they conceive. So it’s not about having sex more times.

Back to my point — the importance of connecting with your partner. So taking the stress off, and so like I said, my hope for you is that fertility awareness charting and understanding the role of mucus and understanding how to identify your fertile window can help to take the pressure off, so that you only have a small window of time in your cycle where you have to have sex with a purpose — like sex with a goal. And so by limiting the number of days of your cycle that sex is a goal-oriented thing, what it can do is it can free up the rest of your cycle to just enjoy each other as normal. And so what I encourage all of my clients and what I encourage you to consider is, if you are trying to conceive and if you have been trying to conceive for a while, to really take that to heart and make a point of having sex out of the window for fun, and just doing whatever it is that you want to do, not feeling any pressure.

I think there’s a lot of things that we do when we’re trying to have a baby that we don’t necessarily do when we’re not. So it could be as simple as laying in bed longer and putting your feet up or having sex in a certain position because you want to. And even that I could add to the myth — like you have to have sex in a certain position to increase your chances of conception. If you think about it, the position that you have sex in wouldn’t matter — it would just be like when you finish, right? So you can have sex in whatever position you want, and then if you’re concerned, you could just finish in a certain way. But if there’s any kind of certain things that you’re doing or not doing specifically because you’re trying to conceive, then you can really limit the window where you’re kind of doing those different things and outside of that window just enjoy and know that it doesn’t matter in the sense that it’s not going to hinder or increase your chance of conceiving if you just have fun sex outside of that window.

So I hope that that’s a message that you can kind of take with you because this can be really devastating to relationships when couples get to the point where they’re only having sex in the window and that’s it and they’re not connecting outside of it. Sex has become something that’s not even fun because of all of those types of things that have happened, and of course the disappointment, and perhaps your partner is getting to the point where he’s feeling like he’s just a sperm donor and that’s like his only role in life, which is to make his deposits. And so you don’t want it to get that way, and if it has gotten that way it doesn’t have to continue to be that way. And so this is something that I always talk about when I have an opportunity because I feel that fertility awareness charting can really liberate you from some of that stuff — to really limit the period of time in your cycle where you have that pressure.

Okay so another point that I wanted to make is seeking support for issues. So what I’ve been saying essentially this whole time is that understanding when to have sex, understanding how the timing works, and understanding the role of cervical fluid, understanding your fertile window, can be beneficial in a number of ways. And so one of the ways is that it can clarify if you have an underlying issue. So if you are getting the timing right consistently and it’s not happening, and you are tracking your ovulation, you’re having sex when you have mucus — if you’ve been told that your partner’s sperm is fine, that’s my least favorite word on planet Earth, because most of my clients who have been trying to conceive for a long period of time, their partner’s sperm is not optimal. So it may be enough for it to pass the World Health Organization standards, which are pretty low. But for the most part, the majority of my clients who’ve been trying to conceive for a really long time and it’s not been happening, their partners aren’t necessarily in the optimal range. It does happen, but most of the time I personally have seen that their sperm could use some work.

So this is key. If you have been trying to conceive and you are on top of the timing, you’ve been tracking your mucus, you’ve been doing everything, six cycles or more, and it hasn’t been happening, then there comes a time where this charting can give you that additional confidence to know that there must be something else wrong. So if you’re having sex on the right days, you’re having sex when you see mucus, it’s within five days of ovulation, if you’re tracking your temperature and all that and you kind of know when it’s happening, then there comes a point where you have to say, okay, it’s not because I’m timing it wrong. It’s not because we’re not having enough sex. It’s not because I’m not laying down in my bed long enough with my feet up. So it can be the thing that prompts you to really look deeper and seek that additional support.

So when you’re trying to conceive and it’s not happening, it’s really beneficial to have a team approach. So of course you need your doctor, you need your fertility specialist, but you may also need a functional doctor — a doctor that looks at root cause medicine. You may also need a naturopath. You may also need, if you have a specific health issue — if you have gut-related issues, or if you have the MTHFR gene mutation, or something like that — if you have an additional thyroid issue, or you have PCOS, or if your partner has health issues, then this would be the opportunity to actually look deeper to see if there’s something else that’s happening. So the takeaway is, if you’re timing it right and you’re not getting pregnant, it’s not because you’re not having enough sex. Simple as that. There has to be something else going on and it would be time to seek support to see about improving those underlying factors, and particularly look at his sperm. And even if you were told that it was fine, get a second opinion. Have someone else look at it. Go to a functional doctor who specializes in male fertility and have that doctor look at the sperm as well.

And then the last thing I wanted to talk about is when charting becomes an issue. So the other thing that has come up in a lot of conversations is that for many women who are trying to conceive, the charting becomes the source of stress and emotional distress, essentially. Because you have your period, and then you have your fertile window when you have all the sex, and then you have the two-week wait to see if you’re pregnant or not. And certainly taking those temperatures every day and having that repeated cycle of disappointment, if that’s been your experience and you haven’t conceived within a certain period of time, it can become really, really stressful for anyone.

And so in those types of situations it really depends on the woman and it really depends on the situation. So again, it might seem strange for the fertility awareness person to be saying, well, if it gets too stressful, just stop charting. That’s literally what I’m saying. If it gets too stressful, you can put away the thermometer. And one of the things you can consider, especially if you still want to be paying attention to timing and things like that, is one of the things I find though is that when you start charting and you pay attention to your cervical fluid, it’s not like you can unsee that. So you would still know that you have it when you have it. But you could just not — like you can modify the way that you’re charting. If it’s causing you a lot of stress, you can either stop charting, stop writing it down for a period of time. You can give yourself a specific window of time. You could go to mucus only — so stop doing temperatures and just do mucus and literally just focus on that and don’t time it or whatever. It’s hard because you’ll still know, but at the same time, if it’s really stressing you out, then you may have to just stop for a while.

And you can stop while still paying attention to your fertile window in a general sense, because when it comes to trying to conceive it’s really just about having sex in the window. Something to think about. For many of you it’s not too stressful and you like charting and it’s fine. But there’s a certain percentage of women who it gets really stressful for and it just becomes something that they have to kind of put on the back burner for a period of time. And that’s okay. There’s no rules here. You can do whatever you need to do. And again, you can still pay attention to your signs and not necessarily write it all down. And you can certainly do it in such a way that it’s not causing you as much stress.

So as I bring this episode to a close, if I were to summarize what we’ve talked about today: we’ve talked about a recipe for a healthy baby, to really know the role of fertility awareness in conception. So to know the role in it in terms of timing, to understand the role of cervical fluid, and really to understand just like when to do it, when to have the sex, to really take the pressure off by recognizing and acknowledging that the fertile window is fairly short and giving yourself permission to then enjoy the period of time that you are not in the fertile window with your partner so that you can still connect. To not feel pressure to have sex all the time — every day, every other day, multiple times a day, all the time. From a scientific standpoint to recognize that having more sex doesn’t necessarily increase the chance of conception. So to free yourself from that, especially if you’ve gotten to the point where it’s negatively affecting your relationship.

Many people may think that the type of advice that they’re giving — many even healthcare practitioners may think that it’s harmless to tell people, “Just have more sex, have sex five times a day.” That’s a real example that one of my clients told me — her doctor told her to have sex five times a day because it’s going to end up with more sperm. And that’s not even biologically accurate. So certainly if you’ve heard some of these things, hopefully this episode is helping to kind of take it down a notch so that we can really find the best way to keep trying but without losing your relationship or your sanity, because it’s not necessary.

The summary in terms of the myths is that some of these myths, although they can seem harmless, can actually be harmful and can be detrimental to a person’s sanity and even to their relationship. And also, many of these things that women are being told to do and couples are being told to do are not only unnecessary but unhelpful. So I believe in really focusing on what works, supporting my clients and couples to figure this out, but from a scientific standpoint and what actually works in real time.

Hopefully this episode has helped. Hopefully it’s encouraged you, taught you something more about the fertile window and how to manage taking some of the stress off when it comes to conception — not having to feel like during the window you have to have so much sex and for it to be so stressful. To know that you could have sex two or three times in the window and that could be fine. But also to help you identify that if you are having sex at the right time cycle after cycle and it’s not happening, to really start to look at what actually is the problem. Because in the vast majority of cases, the problem isn’t that you’re not having enough sex or that you need to have sex five times instead of once. That’s not it. Having more sex when you’re not looking at the underlying root problem isn’t necessarily going to result in what you want.

And as a last thought, there is some degree of magic when it comes to conception, for lack of a better word. There is just something to be said for when it’s the right time and when it’s supposed to happen. And so certainly one of the biggest challenges when you’re trying to conceive is that you just never know. Is this going to be the cycle? Is it going to be next cycle? It can feel like it’s never going to happen, and it could happen next cycle or the cycle after that. And so certainly I hope that this episode is at least giving you a bit of a different perspective, or at least more of a rounded perspective, and also giving you some hope and some real strategies to follow if you do find yourself in that unfortunate situation of trying to conceive for far more cycles than you ever thought it would take.

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend. You’ll find the show notes page for today’s episode over at fertilityfriday.com/408. I hope that you enjoyed today’s episode and of course I hope that you’re enjoying this month’s conception series. And I also hope that today’s episode cleared up some conception myths for you, to really help you to fully utilize fertility awareness cycle charting — to get out of the rhythm method thinking and shift more towards focusing on your cycle, on cervical fluid for timing, so that at least on your conception journey, timing is not the issue.

For many couples, simply timing things correctly is not the only issue, especially if you’ve been trying to conceive for a long time, but it is good to get that handled and under control because for some couples it is simply that. Of course if you are timing correctly already, then it is really important to look deeper and look into other issues for both yourself and your partner. And I will be a broken record that our medical system and just in general our culture does not look towards the men for fertility issues as closely as we look towards the women. It’s a huge problem. Male infertility is certainly on the rise. And so it is really important for both partners to be fully evaluated. So with that said, I hope you have a wonderful week — weekend, whenever you’re tuning into the show. And of course, as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.