Top 10 Ways to Prepare for Pregnancy (Episode 416)

Full Transcript: Episode 416

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 the top 10 ways I prepared for pregnancy. You heard that right, I am pregnant. And for some of you who have been listening for quite some time, like years, you may remember an episode I did many, many years ago — episode 207 — I actually shared the top 10 ways that I was preparing for pregnancy. And at the time of this recording I have two sons. My eldest is nine and my youngest is six. My husband and I were not ready to try for the third just yet. So years of waiting for the quote “perfect time” went by and finally we just decided to go for it.

But fortunately during that time, since I did have it on my radar that I always was thinking about trying for a third baby, there were a number of things that we were doing to prepare ahead of time. And you might think of it as kind of just a way of life. So for those of you who are really keen to, you can take a listen to episode 207. I think a lot of what I’m talking about is similar because it’s essentially the same strategies. But that was kind of the mindset that I was taking. And of course, when we got closer to being ready to try for the third, we ramped it up a little bit. I did share my exciting news on social media. So if you want to see some fun pictures and get some additional details you can find me on Instagram at Fertility Friday. And for more behind-the-scenes details and pictures for when the baby comes and all that fun stuff I would suggest to join my email list. You can head over to fertilityfriday.com/freebies because I tend not to post tons of personal pictures on my social media. I tend to post very little at all, if at all, of my children or my family. But when I do, it’s usually to my email list. So that would be a good place to go for future updates about this pregnancy, as well as fun details once baby does arrive on the scene. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and jump into today’s episode, The Top 10 Ways I Prepared for Pregnancy.

All right, so when I was preparing for this episode, I really sat down and thought about what I thought was most important of all the strategies that I employed as I was preparing for pregnancy, and I thought I would just share what I think is most important. It doesn’t mean these are the only things that I did, but these are certainly the strategies that came to mind that I was doing intentionally throughout the past few years with the goal in mind of starting to try for a baby at some point.

So the first thing will come as no surprise to any of my clients in any of my programs, but eating liver and organ meats regularly is a big part of my pregnancy preparation strategy. And as the mom of the house, when I’m cooking liver regularly and eating it, it also means that my kids and my husband is eating it as well. So in our house, we do buy and eat a lot of liver. We usually make pate once a week or once every other week. And I will share my updated pate recipe in the show notes for those of you who are interested. So I grew up eating liver and it’s not a big issue for me. It’s something that I wish I would have known earlier when I was younger — the nutritional value of liver — because I never really had any hangups about eating it, but I can say that for the majority of my early 20s, I didn’t really make that connection. And although I was always low on iron and I had all these issues with my iron stores, I didn’t have one medical professional encourage me to eat liver as a way to do that. I know many women have the opposite experience because I know many women are actually told to do that to build their iron stores. But either way, eating liver has been just a huge strategy for me. And just trying to be consistent with it is something that we’ve been doing intentionally. I also consume other organ meats. I think most regularly heart, occasionally maybe like kidney or something like that. It really depends on what I have access to.

But for those of you who may not be aware — so why is she eating liver and why is this the first thing that she’s talking about? So liver is nature’s multivitamin. It is an incredible source of iron, of vitamin A, of B vitamins including B12, folate, and B6 and the other B vitamins as well. It’s an incredible source of choline. It’s an incredible source of selenium and zinc and I could go on — but suffice it to say liver is really a powerhouse of nutrition in an incredibly absorbable form, a form that your body can readily absorb and use. And so my personal experience has been since my family since we’ve been incorporating liver, I have had no issues with iron or any issues like I used to have, and it’s really just been incredibly helpful for myself and for my family.

So in addition to those nutrients, liver and heart meat are the highest natural sources of coenzyme Q10, which I think is also very interesting. For any of you who are familiar with strategies for boosting egg quality or sperm quality, you’ll know that coenzyme Q10 is a very commonly used, commonly recommended and well studied supplement to support mitochondrial health and really boost those levels. So, if you’re ever curious like where would you get that in food, it’s really liver and heart meat that are really strong sources of that. So that’s the first one — that’s been a really important part of my strategy and I would say I’ve been consistently doing that since shortly after I had my eldest son.

So number two on my list — eating fish weekly and other sources of omega-3 fatty acids, DHA and EPA. So what we’ve been trying to do just generally speaking is consume fish two or three times a week. And so that’s a natural source of omega-3 fatty acids. I like fish. I enjoy it. I have a good meat shop that sources wild caught fish. And so we’re often buying like rainbow trout or white fish or sometimes salmon. But ironically, I really like the rainbow trout better than the salmon even though it’s not necessarily that different. Other sources of omega-3 include cod liver oil. I do like the company Ancestral Supplements and they have a wild fish roe — fish eggs — which are also a really high source of omega-3 fatty acids. And so that’s something in general that has been part of my strategy. And consuming fish on a regular basis is really important to support egg quality, sperm quality, as well as reduce inflammation. So there’s a lot of good benefits of incorporating fish on a regular basis.

All right, number three — replenishing nutrients from my previous pregnancies and also spacing my pregnancies. So in my case it’s a little bit different because we did wait six years before we tried for number three, but that is something — not necessarily waiting for six years — but just in general having space between pregnancies to really allow my body to heal and recover as well as specifically focus on replenishing nutrients was something that was extremely important to me. So in my case fortunately I didn’t feel that I had to rush between one baby to the next, but it was really important to me to take that time to really let my body heal and recover. And so in terms of replenishing nutrients, I think points one and two are clearly part of that — making a point of incorporating really nutrient-dense foods so that I can really focus on replenishing the nutrients that are really depleted through the process of pregnancy and breastfeeding.

So as I mentioned, I have my two sons and they’re about two and a half, almost three years apart. And so with both children, I did breastfeed for two years each. And so that was a significant time as well as a significant drain on nutrients, if you will. But really, that’s what happens when you grow babies and then breastfeed them for years. And so even though it’s been six years since I have been pregnant, at least, it has been more like four years since I stopped breastfeeding, and so it is something that I really kept in mind. So in particular, I was really keen to replenish my iron stores, vitamin A, my B vitamins, iodine, and other key nutrients. And so obviously the liver is a big part of that, but also some supplementation was necessary in my case to replenish my iodine levels and other nutrients of concern. Additional supplements that I tend to take regularly include vitamin D — as a dark-skinned person living very far north in Canada, we don’t get that many months of sunshine. I mean, living near Toronto, certainly we get a good, a decent summer, but for the majority of the year there’s not a whole lot of sun to speak of. So vitamin D is a really important part of my supplement routine, as is magnesium, for a variety of reasons. For those of you who have listened to the podcast for a while, you’ll know that I have a history of painful periods. And so a lot of the strategies that I employ with diet and lifestyle and supplementation are also aimed at reducing inflammation and maintaining a state of relatively low inflammation as much as possible in my body to really foster healthy periods with significantly less to no pain from cycle to cycle, which is a huge shift from my early 20s when every period was pretty horrific.

So those are some of the basic things that I was doing in terms of replenishing nutrients from previous pregnancies as well as incorporating specific supplements to replenish those nutrients and make sure that my levels are all as optimal as possible as I move into the stage where we are actively trying to conceive.

All right, so number four on my list is consuming enough protein daily, and more on days that I exercise, so that I can support my hormonal health. So this is something that I talk about in a lot of my programs. And the research shows quite clearly that if we’re not getting enough protein and overall calories, it’s really hard for us to support optimal hormone production and ultimately maintain a healthy menstrual cycle. So with my days — working are quite busy — I often have calls back to back to back. So one of the things I try to do as much as possible is to really prioritize eating. So eating a good strong full breakfast in the mornings with sufficient protein is really important. Eating lunch, making sure the lunch has a good balance of protein, fat and carbohydrates, as well as healthy snacks during the day is necessary and also at dinner time. And so I’m not a big workout person. I go kind of more in bits and spurts. And so there are times when I do some HIIT exercises maybe, but honestly, I have to say that I’m not very intense with the way that I approach exercise. So when I say doing a HIIT workout, I’m usually doing 10 minutes and really it’s hit and miss. But as many of my clients know, I do have a walking desk option. So I have an underdesk treadmill that I walk on sometimes during calls and things like that, not necessarily as much for exercise, although obviously exercise is taking place. I had this issue where I threw out my back and so I needed a way to work and have the ability to sit, stand and move so that I’m not putting undue stress on my back. So long story short, there are times when I am getting in a couple of hours of walking while I’m working. And so on those days where I do exercise a little bit more, or on those days that I’m walking or if I’m doing activities with the boys, I do make a point of aiming to get enough protein. And I found that that helps in a number of ways. It helps for my recovery. It helps for my energy levels, but it also helps to support my hormonal health so that my menstrual cycle stays relatively stable, so that my luteal phase stays relatively stable, and my progesterone production is pretty consistent. So that’s something that’s been very important to me that I do stick to.

Number five, eating healthy fats. So I wrote down butter, eggs, and whole unpasteurized dairy. So I do have access to raw milk, fortunately, and it’s been a pretty big blessing for my family. And so there are a number of different products that we get from them. We do get butter, we get milk and cheese, and sometimes I’ll buy yogurt, and sometimes they have sour cream, and I’m big into the dairy. And so I’ve been fortunate to have access to A2 milk, so it’s cow’s milk but it’s A2. So the brief rundown is that a lot of the commercial dairy products that are available are coming from Holstein cows, and those cows are producing milk that has the A1 protein. And so you can do a quick search on that if you’ve never heard of this before, but the A1 protein — A1 beta casein — is linked to a lot of inflammatory conditions from painful periods, endometriosis, to a lot of other inflammatory conditions. And so many women do report that if they’re switching from the regular conventional dairy to A2 options — so often that might be sheep’s milk or goat’s milk or milk that’s coming from Guernsey or Jersey cows that do produce naturally the A2 milk — many women find that switching from the one to the other can significantly reduce some of their inflammatory symptoms, particularly period pain. And I know that was part of my own journey. Switching to a different kind of milk certainly helped with my inflammation and reduced my level of pain.

But one of the things that I’ve done specifically in preparation for pregnancy and also as just part of my overall strategy for supporting healthy menstrual cycle is to ensure that I’m incorporating sufficient healthy fats into my diet so that I’m giving my body the raw material it needs to make the hormones that I need to have a healthy cycle. So estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, cortisol, and even vitamin D — we make those hormones from cholesterol, which we get from animal fats. And yes, our body has the capacity to make cholesterol to some degree. But what I found is that consuming a diet with sufficient healthy fats has really been helpful and essential to supporting my optimal hormone production. So that’s something that I do intentionally. So often my breakfast involves eggs. Sometimes it involves sardines. I know a lot of people don’t like sardines because they have a very kind of an acquired taste type flavor. But either way, I do my best to consume sufficient fat and sufficient protein alongside my carbohydrates. Often I’m opting for low glycemic carbohydrates so that I maintain a good blood sugar balance during the day. I find also that having good full meals with a good balance of protein, fat and carbohydrates really helps me to get through the day without always feeling hungry, hangry, and always feeling like I need a snack. So when I start my day with a really good full breakfast that is really balanced and not super high in high glycemic carbohydrates, what I find is that I’m really able to last for a few hours until I go to lunch. And my history was when I was in high school and when I was in my early, late teens, early 20s, oatmeal was the breakfast every single day. And my experience of that was that I would eat the oatmeal and then I would be hungry 30 minutes later. And then my day would be always just around food and snacks. So really organizing my meals, eating sufficient healthy fats, and balancing my blood sugar by not consuming high glycemic carbohydrates all the time has really made a huge difference, and has really helped to support my overall menstrual cycle health.

All right, number six. One of the things I also do on a regular basis is incorporate fermented foods and consume bone broths and soups to support gut health. So it’s a pretty consistent habit. I used to make kefir — that was a while ago — but I used to make kefir. I would get the milk from the farm and then I’d make kefir. I have since stopped making kefir. It was a lot of work and took a lot of time, even though it’s really, really easy. So for anyone who actually does make kefir, and for anyone who’s not familiar with kefir — kefir is fermented milk. It’s similar to yogurt, but it certainly has more variety of bacteria. So it has a larger number of different bacteria as well as a higher quantity, and so it’s quite a strong fermented probiotic food. And so that’s one of the things that I do on a regular basis. And now, fortunately for me, the farm makes it, so I just buy it from the farm. And I also often make sauerkraut. I usually make it once a year, and then I make enough so that it lasts for the majority of the year. So fermented foods are just kind of a part of our diet, and it’s something that I just generally try to incorporate at least a few times every week. And then we do make a lot of soups. We love bone broths and soups and stews and things like that in my house. So we do make a point of incorporating those things on a regular basis.

So number seven, optimizing my thyroid health. So many of you may know that I do have an issue with my thyroid. It was one of the first things that I actually discovered when I started charting my cycles. My cycles were really long. And I wouldn’t say they were irregular — they were just long. So I always had ovulation. My ovulation actually was regular, but my cycles when I first started charting were typically between like 38 and 45 days kind of thing. So I was ovulating, you know, day 20, day 25, that kind of thing. And so I was always ovulating but it was always late. And I think it was a combination of issues with my thyroid and potentially I think I potentially fell a little bit on that PCOS spectrum. I’m quite sensitive to high glycemic foods. And when I was younger I would say that I was addicted to sugar — I always joke, but it’s not really a joke, that gummy candies were like a food group. So once I got that sorted out and had my issue with my thyroid — so I was diagnosed with hypothyroid — once I had that sorted out and I was put on medication for that, that really did over time help to normalize my cycles. And so these days my cycles are right in that normal range falling into that 29 day on average situation. Occasionally I’ll have a cycle that’s a little bit longer, but that’s just a part of the cycle changes that happen, normal fluctuations.

For anyone who’s been charting for any length of time, you’ll know what I mean. And so either way, for me, optimizing my thyroid because of this issue that I have had to face all these years is important to me and it is a part of my strategy. And so essentially what that looks like for me is ensuring that I do get myself checked out every now and then to make sure everything’s still in order. I pay close attention to how I feel. So because this is something I’ve been dealing with for two decades, I’m pretty on top of it. So if I notice my energy levels dipping or other types of signs, then it’s a huge clue. And I’m also aware of potential seasonal fluctuations where sometimes during the winter months I notice a bit of a dip in my thyroid function.

So some of the things that I do outside of just making sure that I’m checked and supported through my own practitioners is I do make sure to take thyroid-supporting nutrients as needed, and I’ve done this for many years. One of the things — I already mentioned the company Ancestral Supplements — they actually make a beef thyroid supplement and so it’s essentially liver mixed with thyroid. And so to be clear, this is not something that replaces my medication, but it’s something that has been really helpful to provide additional thyroid supporting nutrients. And it kind of comes from that idea of like, like helps like. So that’s something that I’ve been doing. So again, I take it to provide those thyroid supporting nutrients, not to be a replacement for my medication. Because in my case, I did need medication. Looking back, who knows — maybe if I could go back and do things differently, maybe I wouldn’t have had to use medication at that time. But at the end of the day, that’s where we are at now and things were a little bit different. I didn’t have the same resources and support that I do now. So for those of you who have had, or think you might have, or have been diagnosed with an issue with thyroid, it is always important to work with your practitioner and recognize that it’s sometimes necessary to be on medication.

So either way, in addition to the beef thyroid, I’ve also made a point of ensuring that I keep my vitamin D levels good. Liver is a great source of vitamin A, which is thyroid supporting. I often will consume Brazil nuts on a regular basis for selenium. And there are certain thyroid supporting supplements that I incorporate from time to time. So that’s something that’s important for me. And to be honest, one of the ways that I have noticed that is kind of necessary for me to support my thyroid is maintaining my other lifestyle factors. Because if I really try to push it, if I were to work out for an hour really intense, you know, five days a week, it would make me quite tired. So there’s the supplements and that strategy, but there’s also the lifestyle strategy of taking care of myself, making sure I’m eating good, and sleep is something really crucial. If I really kind of screw around with my sleep and stay up too late or something like that for a couple of days in a row, then it does take me a little bit longer to recover because of the issue that I have with my thyroid.

All right, so number eight, optimizing my menstrual cycle. So this is something — I mean, you can tell that that thread runs through all of the other points that I have been sharing to date — but I did include it as a separate point for a couple of reasons. But ultimately, when it comes to preparing for pregnancy and planning ahead, it’s really — the whole time it’s been really important to me to optimize my menstrual cycle. And what that means for me is ensuring that I have good strong follicular development, healthy mucus production, timely ovulation. As I mentioned, many years ago when I first started charting, my cycles were on the longer end and my ovulation was delayed. And it did take me some time to figure out why that was happening and to resolve that issue. And so like I said, in a given year I may have one cycle that’s more like 35 days or something like that, but the majority of the time it is around that 29 day mark. And those times when it does go a little bit longer, it’s usually a sign for me that I have to look at those lifestyle factors, look at what I’m doing, what I’m eating, all those kinds of things just to make sure that I’m staying on track.

So throughout the years, paying attention to my menstrual cycles has been a really crucial part of staying on track. And I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination — that’s not a thing. But what I always tell my clients is it’s really not about being perfect. It’s about learning to read the signs, to pay attention to the signs that your body’s showing you and adapt when you need to. So optimizing my menstrual cycles has been a big part of this process, and I do that through charting, paying attention to my fertile signs, paying attention to my patterns. And if I do have those times where the cycle changes a little bit or the parameters start to kind of go out of the norm, then it’s always a good sign for me to rein it in.

One of the things I’ve done over the last couple of years — and I did an episode, it was probably around the same time as when I released the episode years ago about preparing for pregnancy — so I’ll link this episode as well — but I did an episode where I shared my sugar experiment. I shared my history of being addicted to gummy candies and sugar and sweets. And like I said, I am not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and it’s not to say that I never eat anything sweet. But certainly in my current state, it’s nothing like it was when I was a teenager. Either way, I shared on the podcast an episode about my experiment with really cutting sugar and cutting sweets for a period of time. And one of the interesting things that happened when I did that — so really just honing in on the sweets and cutting them out and or severely reducing them — what I found was that my luteal phase actually improved. So when I first started charting my cycles, my luteal phase tended to be 12 to 13 days give or take, but never above 13. And over the past several years of me trying different things and incorporating different strategies to boost progesterone, I have managed to get my luteal phase up to 14, sometimes 15 days occasionally. So it’s not always the same, but I didn’t even know that it was possible to get my own luteal phase up to that point. And that’s an example of one of the ways that I’ve just been experimenting and trying different things, incorporating different strategies to optimize my cycles and to boost my progesterone and all those things.

So number nine — I’ve mentioned this already, but it is its own point — optimizing my sleep. So to be honest, getting to bed early is one of the biggest challenges for me. So everyone has their weak spots. For some of my clients it’s coffee. For some of my clients it’s, I would say, over exercise. But for me, one of my biggest challenges is getting to sleep on time. If you were to talk to my husband, he would roll his eyes and just say that I’m a night owl. I like to stay up late. And so this again has been a challenge for me, and I think it’s because from when I was young I never really went to bed that early. And so I naturally kind of fell into that habit of going to bed around 11 or 12. And if I’m stressed out, if something’s on my mind, then that’s how I deal with it. So it’s a very unhealthy habit, but I’m being honest and admitting it here.

Optimizing my sleep is really important for a number of reasons. I mentioned my issue with my thyroid, and so if I do stay up late, it’s like a bad combination — stress plus not sleeping does make it worse. And like I said, I do find that as I get older, it does take me more to recover. Whereas when I was younger, if I stayed up, it was fine, I could stay up and I would just get up early the next day and do what I needed to do. But I find that now that I’m older, if I do stay up really late and have a really bad sleep, it often takes me a couple of days to recover from that.

So a few things I’ve done to optimize my sleep. And again, it’s not about being perfect, but it’s more about getting into the habit so that the majority of the time I’m falling into my good habit, and then it’s more of the exception if I have that one night where I choose to stay up a little bit later. So a couple of things that I do: one of the things is to really aim to get into bed by about 11 o’clock. And that can be a challenge running a house with young children. As my kids get older, they are really adept at pushing bedtime. So I do struggle with this even still. For me, I tend to like to have a little bit of wind down time before bed. So it’s not the greatest thing when the kids are going to bed a bit later and then I still need that extra 30 minutes to sit there and drink my tea and relax or whatever when I should probably be getting into bed. So it’s a work in progress. But again, one of my strategies is to really aim to be in bed by about 11 o’clock, so really then starting that wind down time at 9:30, 10, so that I can get myself into my bed by 11 o’clock. And when I do get to bed by 11 o’clock or earlier — sometimes I do go to bed earlier at 10 o’clock or even sometimes 9:30, but that’s more rare — then I really do find a huge benefit for my hormones, for my cycle, to support my thyroid, feel a lot more rested, and also a lot more alert.

So a few other things that I do that are helpful: I’m not a big coffee drinker. I’m quite sensitive to coffee, so if I do drink a caffeinated beverage like coffee or tea or anything like that a few days in a row, I do find that my body does get addicted to it quickly and then I will have that headache. Within three days of drinking caffeine every day in a row I will have a headache because my body will get addicted to it. And I do find that it seems to affect my sleep somehow, whether that’s just that I don’t feel as rested or that it’s harder for me to get to sleep. So generally speaking, I don’t drink caffeinated beverages on a regular basis. And so that does help that when it’s time to go to sleep, I do go to sleep.

There are a number of other things that I do. I mean, one of the things is that if I’m using my devices later, I do try to come off of my devices at some point in the evening. And so when I’m using the devices, I do tint the screen so that they are orange or red, so that I’m really minimizing my blue light exposure. And I make sure that my room is dark. So this is something that I also talk about a lot with my clients — one of the ways to support progesterone production and to boost your luteal phase, depending on the situation, is to ensure that you are sleeping in the dark at night. So that’s something that’s really important to me. I actually just recently bought some new blackout curtains. And either way, I really make an effort to create a good sleep environment. So between some of the earlier strategies of taking magnesium regularly and having a dark room, I really do find that it does help my sleep. So even if it’s not perfect and I stay up a little bit later than I would like to, when I get into my dark room, then I do have a really restful sleep most nights.

All right, so last but not least — this is actually very important. I know I left it till the last, but I thought that I would focus on some of the things that I’m doing for myself and my own hormones and my menstrual cycle, but I really want just to emphasize that number 10 is actually really, really important. So I could have put it at the top, and that’s how important it is. So encouraging my husband to also follow a preconception diet. And again, when preparing for pregnancy, we typically think about what we need to do, how to support our hormones, our menstrual cycle, our egg quality, preconception nutrition, making sure that we have our nutrient stores up. These are all things that are really important. But one of the things that falls to the wayside — that you, if you’ve listened to the podcast a lot, have heard me talk about a ton — is really focusing on the male side as well. So it’s just as important, even though we’re the ones that carry the baby to term. And obviously it’s different because we have to be well nourished to carry the pregnancy. Your baby is 50% of your partner’s genetic material. So when you are in the throes of preparing for pregnancy, it is also equally important for him to be participating somehow. And what I always say is that there’s no man alive that’s so healthy that he can’t even benefit from a multivitamin or something like that.

So it does just trickle down by me emphasizing liver and fish and cooking that way on a regular basis. I mean, I’m cooking for my family, not just for myself. So my husband benefits from it also, but it’s something that I make a point of. So during this time when we were planning ahead for conception, one of the things in addition to me consuming all these foods was for me to encourage him also to participate. So that meant to encourage him to eat liver, to make dishes with hidden liver, as Lily Nichols would say. And so I do that by — we often do beef dishes, we might do a taco salad, we might do lasagna every now and then — but whenever we’re doing dishes that involve ground meat, there’s usually liver involved. And so that’s something where I’m intentionally trying to do the liver every week so that everyone can benefit from that, including my husband. So regular liver consumption, fish consumption — again, it’s not just for me, it’s for him as well. I make a point of eating lots of leafy green vegetables. We do eat a lot of citrus fruits. And so for sperm quality, green leafy vegetables and citrus fruits are really high in antioxidants, and those items are known to support sperm quality, as well as liver — there are a number of nutrients including zinc, including vitamin A, which is really essential, folate. And so these are things to keep in mind. So in addition to that, I do encourage him to do his vitamin D regularly. And especially during the months, say the six months leading up to when we were planning to start trying, then I did encourage him to consider taking CoQ10 — coenzyme Q10. I had already mentioned that is known to support sperm quality. We often take vitamin C in the house. And so there’s a few other antioxidant type supplements. But I would say the biggest strategy in our house for my husband was to just kind of benefit from the overall diet of our family.

But I wanted to mention that because it was an important part of the strategy. And there were a few specific supplements that I encouraged him to take, not because we had any concerns necessarily, but just because we knew that we were planning to try. And so it made sense for him to do some of these things during that time. So for anyone who’s not that aware of it — if you’re wanting to target sperm quality and improve it, so particularly if your partner has had a semen analysis that was less optimal — it does take a minimum of three to four months to start to see the results. Because when your partner ejaculates today, it’s a measure of basically what was happening three months ago, because that’s how long it takes for the sperm to be made.

So that brings us to the end of the list. And again, I saved maybe the best for last because I do think it’s really important for us to involve our partners. So I’ll go over just to summarize what the 10 points were. So the first point was eating liver and organ meats regularly. The second point was eating fish weekly and incorporating other sources of omega-3 fatty acids. The third was replenishing nutrients from my previous pregnancies and spacing pregnancies — taking enough space in between so I felt that I was able to fully recover, and also incorporating specific supplements to aid in that process of replenishing nutrients. Number four was consuming enough protein daily, and more protein on days that I exercise, just to ensure that I’m supporting optimal hormone balance. Five was eating healthy fats, making sure that I incorporate healthy fats to support hormone production, as well as getting a good balance of protein, fat and carbohydrates at each meal so that I maintain a good balance of blood sugar. Six was incorporating fermented foods and consuming bone broths to support gut health. Seven, optimizing my thyroid health because that’s one of the issues that I have struggled with. Eight, optimizing my menstrual cycles — specifically charting my cycles and paying attention in particular to boosting my progesterone production in the luteal phase. Nine is optimizing my sleep, and so I do have a few strategies to really support myself in doing that and to really help me to get a good restful sleep. And last but not least, encouraging my husband to also follow a preconception diet and incorporate a few supplements as necessary.

So again, those aren’t necessarily the only things that I was doing, but those were the 10 things that really did come to mind — the 10 things that I felt were extremely important and things that I was doing consistently during the whole preconception process. We did have a bit of a runway, given that my youngest is six years old. These were things that I do on a regular basis. But of course, when we got to that six to 12 months prior to when we were planning to start trying, I certainly ramped it up more. But ultimately, these were the things that I was doing anyways.

And many of these items that I mentioned are still going to be on my list of what to focus on postpartum. And so again, one of my top priorities when I have just given birth and when I’m breastfeeding a little one is to really focus on replenishing my nutrients and ensuring that I am well nourished so that I can take good care of my baby. Having gone through the process of having a baby twice and breastfeeding and taking care of a little one, what I can tell you if you’ve never experienced that before is that it is really taxing on your body. Our culture really just does not give enough focus to how taxing it is on your body to grow a little human being and to feed that human being. Because even if you are feeling great — let’s say that you are fully nourished, you did lots of preconception preparation to really build up your nutrient stores and you’re actually good in that department — it is still very difficult when you have a newborn. It takes a lot of energy and work. Newborns don’t sleep at regular hours. So it is very taxing having to get up throughout the night and to take care of this little one, even in the best of times. And so this is something that’s a huge priority for me to do my best to have as much energy as I possibly can to take care of my newest member of the family when he or she arrives. The same strategies that I’m following for preconception will be very similar to the strategies that I’m following once baby arrives.

So as I mentioned at the top of the episode, my husband and I are expecting. We’re very, very excited to welcome our newest family member. And my boys are over the moon. They are so excited to meet their new sibling. And they have just been the sweetest, funnest, kindest little ones during this whole pregnancy. It’s been a really fun experience so far.

And for those of you who are wondering if you are listening in real time, babies should be making an arrival at some point in the summer. I tend not to provide specific dates when people ask because babies come when they come. But at some point towards the middle to end of summer is when we are expecting baby Jack. So as I mentioned at the top of the episode, if you’re wanting to get the inside scoop and the deets when baby arrives, I would suggest to jump on my email list. So fertilityfriday.com/freebies. You can grab the freebie of your choice and join my email list. That’s where I tend to post more than I would on social media. Not to say I’m not gonna post anything, but in terms of the details and the stories and those kinds of things, I usually save those things for my email list.

If you can think of any friends who are planning to conceive in the near future or who have been trying to conceive and think they may benefit from this episode, feel free to share. The link to today’s episode is fertilityfriday.com/416. And of course, my intention with today’s episode is just to share some of the things that I’ve been doing, not to suggest that what I’m doing is the perfect way or the only way, but I know that many of you are curious about how I did prepare for pregnancy and what some of the things that I did were.

And I suppose one other thing that I can just throw in for interest sake — especially for those of you who are planning to conceive in the near future or who are trying to conceive — obviously the fertility awareness knowledge that I have, it’s something that I I guess you could say I took for granted in this process. So when my husband and I were ready to conceive, we do know based on my cycle when would be the best time. And it’s not a secret. It is the days of cervical fluid leading up to ovulation. So those are the days of fertility. It’s extremely helpful to have that history of cycle charting, the history of charts to understand my cycle patterns, what’s normal for me, what’s not, so that when we were ready to start trying, we just were able to jump in and time sex accurately.

And one of the things that I spoke about in previous episodes, especially in the conception series in previous weeks, was really to focus on those days of cervical fluid. So the days of cervical fluid prior to ovulation — whether it is the lotiony type mucus, the non-peak mucus, or whether it is a clear, stretchy type cervical mucus — both are considered fertile as you approach ovulation. You can pay particular attention to your days of peak cervical fluid because those days are considered to be optimal when you’re trying to conceive, because they’re often a sign of estrogen levels rising and maybe closer to your ovulation day. And really when it’s time to try, you want to have sex one or more times during that window. So I basically say as long as you’ve had sex once or twice during that five days leading up to ovulation, that is considered a try, and any additional times are bonus. So you don’t need to have sex every single day or multiple times a day or any of that. The most important thing is to get the timing right, meaning to time sex within that fertile window. So during that five-day period before ovulation, when you’re tracking and charting your cervical fluid, simply when you see cervical fluid, have sex. The timing part of it is really that simple. It’s not always that simple to conceive, but in terms of timing, that’s all that needs to happen in order for the timing to be correct.

So with that said, I hope you have a wonderful weekend whenever you are tuning into the show. Thank you for spending some time with me today. I had a lot of fun putting this episode together and I do hope you enjoyed it. And so enjoy the rest of your day. And as always, until next time, be well and happy charting.