How to Get Pregnant

Want to increase your chance of getting pregnant? We've got tips to help boost your odds of conception

By Teresa Pitman

You need just three things to get pregnant: an egg, sperm, and a way to get them together, says Dr. Alison Barrett, an  obstetrican-gynecologist from Alliston, Ontario. Sounds easy, and in fact most of the time our bodies do a great job of making this happen without us even thinking about it or being aware of the process. When it doesn’t happen naturally, though, it can help to have a little more information about where babies come from to increase the odds of conception.

The Female Parts

If you stayed awake during high-school biology, you probably remember learning about the female reproductive system.  Women have two ovaries, and these contain, at birth, all the eggs the woman will ever have. Every month, some eggs begin to mature. One gets a little ahead of the others (or, occasionally, more than one) and becomes the “egg of the month” that escapes from the ovary and travels into the nearest Fallopian tube leading into the uterus. This is called ovulation. It’s there in the Fallopian tube that sperm and egg meet up and a baby begins.

The hormonal sequence that makes this all happen, says Barrett, is like a “well-conducted orchestra of chemistry.” And sometimes, the orchestra falters – the violins just don’t start playing at the right time – and conception becomes more difficult. In assessing women with possible fertility concerns, Barrett says she looks for regular menstrual cycles (not that they need to be exactly 28 days long, but there should be a consistent pattern) and other physical changes such as sore or tender breasts and some cramping during menstruation that indicate the hormones are in play.

As women get older, they begin to have more monthly cycles where they do not ovulate, and fertility decreases. At age 35, for example, you have about an 80% chance of conceiving within a year, and by age 38, it’s already dropped to 70%.

Because the sperm needs to penetrate the egg in the Fallopian tubes, there are only a few days each month when conception can happen. So it is possible to be perfectly fertile and just miss the crucial timing.

The Male Parts

While women usually produce just one egg each month, men produce millions of sperm. That number isn’t quite as high as it used to be, adds Barrett: studies have shown that sperm counts around the world are decreasing, probably because of environmental contaminants. On the other hand, a low sperm count doesn’t mean no baby. “While sperm count does matter, you only need one to make a baby,” Barrett points out.

It’s also important that the sperm are healthy and active, Barrett adds, and this is something that will also be looked at during a fertility work-up.

While it seems logical that having sex every day would increase your chances of getting pregnant – you’d be guaranteed to hit the time when the egg is present, you’d think – in fact too-frequent sex can lead to a lower sperm count, and, more importantly, fewer healthy, active sperm. So Barrett recommends intercourse every other day during the most fertile times.

Hitting the precise day of ovulation isn’t critical, she adds. Sperm can live for a few days inside the uterus and Fallopian tubes, and are willing to hang around waiting for an egg to show up. That extends the time in which you can conceive.

Getting Together

Between the vagina and the uterus is the cervix, which is shaped like a small doughnut with a very small hole in the middle. That’s where, during intercourse, the sperm enter the uterus on their way to the Fallopian tubes. Most of the time, though, that entrance is blocked by thick, unfriendly cervical mucus. It’s only on the days just before and during ovulation that the mucus changes to clear and slippery – much like egg whites – and speeds the arriving sperm along on their journey.

Even when the mucus is favourable, though, sometimes the sperm and egg can’t get together because the Fallopian tubes are blocked in some way. When everything else looks fine, and a couple still can’t conceive, tests may be done to determine if this is the issue.

 

Becoming Informed

Burlington, Ontario, mom Liana Moore was 34 when she and her husband decided they wanted to have a child. Moore had experienced a couple of miscarriages in the past and was aware of the possibility of declining fertility, so she looked into the “sympto-thermal method” as a way of better understanding her cycles.

“I would take my temperature every morning, as soon as I woke up and before I got out of bed,” Moore says. She used a special ovulation thermometer that could identify small changes in temperature, and kept track of these changes on a chart. “What you see is that your temperature goes up, then dips and goes up again. Ovulation happens around the time of that dip.” Moore discovered that she usually ovulated around day 12 of her cycle, rather than the “average” day 14.  She was also taught to observe changes in her cervical mucus – “it’s easy to do, you just check when you go to the bathroom,” she explains.

With this information, Moore was able to conceive in less than four months. And a couple years after her little boy was born, she did it all over again – once again conceiving in just a couple of months and giving birth to a second son.  “I liked understanding how my body was working, and it really worked well for us,” she says.

For other couples, it’s more complicated.  Even with careful timing they may not conceive. “Generally, younger couples are encouraged to try for a year before considering fertility treatments,” says Barrett. “But if you are 35 or older, we encourage you to seek help after six months of unsuccessfully trying to get pregnant.”

The good news, she adds, is that there are now many techniques to help couples with fertility problems that dramatically increase the chances for success. “There is hope,” she says. “We have some really good treatments and options now.”