- Start prenatal vitamins as soon are you are considering getting pregnant. Now you can get prenatal vitamins with DHA included, but I found a few downsides to that. They're WAY more expensive and they aren't as easy on your stomach. After lots of research and input from my pharmacist friend, I opted for Nature Made Prenatals. I supplemented these with a Fish Oil/DHA and calcium.
- You may want to give up smoking, drugs, alcohol, and caffeine before attempting to get pregnant. And that goes for your partner too. These have been found to reduce fertility. The extent of my drinking pre-pregnancy was a glass of wine here or there, so I wasn't overly concerned with this.
- It will take your body some time to regulate after stopping birth control. Now this doesn't mean that you can't get pregnant the first cycle off, it just means your cycle won't be consistent and that if you plan on charting, it may be difficult.
- Stress does not reduce fertility! Again, it may make your cycle irregular and make it difficult to chart/predict when you're ovulating, but it doesn't make you any less fertile.
- It can take a while to get pregnant. For an average, healthy woman, it takes 6 to 12 months to become pregnant.
With this last piece of information, my husband and I decided that we wanted to get started sooner rather than later. I will be going off my birth control at the end of my current pack, which is exactly one month from now.
