A few weeks back I wrote a post about how to conceive a girl baby and talked about both The Shettles Method for conceiving a girl and the O+12 method. I also briefly touched on the Whelan Method but to be fair didn’t write about it as much as Shettles because I didn’t have all the information.
So this post I’m going to go into more detail on the Whelan Method and also look at some other sex selection theories as well so you have all the information.
If you are trying to get pregnant, you probably want to know some different methods in getting pregnant that people have used successfully. Well I’ve done a few searches online and it seems that there isn’t a ‘guaranteed’ way to conceive a baby but there are a few things to help sway the odds into your favor so you have a better chance of getting pregnant.
Whether you are attempting pregnancy for the first time or have been trying to get pregnant for a while you should know that conceiving is not quite as simple as your biology teacher would make you believe. In fact each month, even a perfectly healthy couple only has around a 25% chance of conceiving a baby.
Of course you can increase your chances if you know when you are fertile and what positions are best for getting pregnant, so this post will go over some of the best ways to get pregnant.
For starters you need to know when in your cycle you ovulate (release an egg). A woman is actually only fertile for about 3 or 4 days per month and has the highest chance of conceiving on the day of ovulation. So determining your ovulation day is the first step in getting pregnant. Many women assume that they ovulate on Day 14, however this day is actually just an average and it could be that you ovulate earlier or later than this (I actually ovulate on Day 17). You’ll need to know this day in order to increase your chances to get pregnant each month.
There are many different ways to find your ovulation day, you can try charting your temperature, using ovulation predictor kits (OPK’s), using a saliva monitor like Maybe Baby, taking note of your cervical position or becoming aware of your changes in fertile egg white cervical mucus.
Let’s look at each method for how to fall pregnant fast in more detail:
Charting Your Temperature: This method relies on taking your temperature (either orally or vaginally) each morning before you get up using a basal body thermometer (BBT Method). When your body releases an egg your hormone level change and your temperature will usually go up a small amount. Once you see the thermal shift and your temperature has gone over the coverline for at least three days you’ll know that your ovulation day was the first day your temperature rose.
Of course using the BBT Method you can only know you’ve ovulated after the fact, but charting for at least three months you’ll get to know your body quite well and you can see which day you usually ovulate each time in your cycle.
Ovulation Predictor Kits (OPKs): These tests work very similar to pregnancy tests in that you need to pee on them to detect changes in hormones. As your body is getting ready to release an egg your hormone levels change and the OPK’s will pick up on that. You may see two lines on your test strip but for an OPK to be positive the second line must be as dark or darker then the control line. You will then probably ovulate in the next 24 hours, but you might want to keep charting your temperature to confirm that.
Saliva Monitors: Like OPK’s these will tell you if you are about to ovulate. When your body is close to releasing an egg your saliva changes to a ferning pattern which can be detected under a microscope. You could use a regular microscope or one of the saliva monitors such as Maybe Baby to look for the pattern.
Cervical Position: If you are not squeamish then keeping note of the position of your cervix can also indicate when you are ovulating. When you are in your fertile phase and your body is capable of getting pregnant your cervix rises high in the body (and opens slightly). It also gets softer. When you are not fertile, it gets harder and lower.
Cervical Fluid: Cervical Fluid or Cervical Mucus is another great way to determine when you are fertile. As you are approaching your ovulation day, your body starts producing more mucus. It changes from dry, to sticky, to creamy, to wet and finally to the most fertile cervical mucus – one that is very slippery and has the appearance of egg whites – which is why it’s often called egg white cervical fluid (ewcf). This helps the sperm travel through the body to the egg and is a great indication of when you are about to ovulate. You are most fertile on the days where you have ewcf.
So now that you know your ovulation day you are one step closer to getting pregnant.
Here are some more tips for increasing your cervical fluid to make yourself even more fertile:
- Drink lots of water – your body needs to make the ewcf out of something
- Baby carrots – the beta carotene has been known to increase the amount of cf you produce
- Plain Robitussin – the active ingredients help thin out your cf making it easier for the sperm to swim through
Which positions are best to get pregnant and conceive a baby?
Actually there is no one best position to get pregnant, however using gravity to your advantage can help (so try and avoid standing positions).
However most couples who conceive say that the two most favorable positions are the missionary position and doggy style. Personally I favor the doggy position or any other deep penetration position when you want to fall pregnant because it deposits the sperm as close to the cervix as possible and you want as much sperm to be able to reach the egg to increase your changes of conceiving.
Knowing your ovulation day is the best way to know the ways to get pregnant fast but you can give your body a helping hand by increasing your cervical fluid and using positions that help you conceive as well.
pH Levels to Get Pregnant
While diet itself will help you improve your fertility, pH itself does not determine whether you can or cannot get pregnant (although it can sometimes influence gender selection). Healthy eating will help you have healthy eggs though.
If you are trying to achieve a pregnancy then you know that there are only a few days per month that you are able to conceive properly that results in getting pregnant, and those days are when you ovulate (when your body releases the egg ready to be fertilized).
However determining when you ovulate is not as simple as having intercourse around Day 14 – the supposed magical day that all women are supposed to ovulate – because every woman is different and Day 14 is just an average day. You might ovulate later or earlier.
And it isn’t just ovulation that you need to know to get pregnant; you also have to have lots of fertile egg white cervical fluid, be healthy and not stressed, and avoid certain foods such as caffeine and peas (yes ordinary green peas have been known to have contraceptive qualities) and of course your partner needs to have lots of healthy sperm too.
With all that we have to do to conceive a baby – is it any wonder that so many of us have trouble getting pregnant?
For the rest of this article, I’m going to assume that you are in perfect health and your partner’s sperm count is fine, and talk about how to determine the best time to conceive to result in a pregnancy.
There are many ways to determine when you ovulate but the most common ways are: charting your basal body temperature, using ovulation predictor kits, using a saliva fertility monitor like Maybe Baby, feeling for the position and softness of your cervix, or keeping track of when you produce fertile egg white cervical mucus (ewcm).
Once you have determined your ovulation day, you should aim to have intercourse every day starting five days before right up to the day after you ovulation day. This will give you the best chances of catching the egg so that you can conceive and fall pregnant.
There have been some rumors on one of the fertility message boards that I read that taking cranberry juice or cranberry tablets will improve your chances of conceiving a baby. Now I knew that cranberry can help if you have a UTI infection, but can it help you to get pregnant?
From the research that I’ve found, taking cranberry does not help pregnancy per se, but it can influence the gender of your child – which is great news if you are trying for a girl baby.
What it does is make the cervical mucus (cm) more acidic and therefore more hostile to sperm. But because the female sperm are stronger, they are more likely to be able to survive and reach the egg.
Cranberry can also interfere with the amount of cervical mucus that you produce, often drying up your CM, again making it harder for the male sperm to navigate through since sperm need a good amount of egg white cervical mucus (ewcm) to swim through to reach the fallopian tubes.
So who should take cranberry?
If you are trying for a girl and you have no issue with the amount of fertile ewcm that you produce then by all means take cranberry juice or tablets (either is fine). At the very least you’ll reduce your chances of contracting a UTI! Lol
If you are trying simply to fall pregnant, then it’s probably best to avoid the cranberry because it can dry up your mucus making it more difficult to conceive if you are already having problems in that area.
If you currently have a UTI and are taking cranberry tablets or drinking cranberry juice to try and clear it up, but also are trying to conceive then make sure you drink lots of water as well to make sure it doesn’t interfere with the amount of ewcm that you produce.
I started this getting pregnant blog as I have been trying to conceive my second child for quite some time now. During those years I have researched an extensive amount of fertility information from books, online, scientific research, asking my fertile friends and other places. Therefore my goal for this getting pregnant blog is to provide you with as much of the information that I have found about falling pregnant and conceiving a child.
While this blog is still relatively new, over the next few weeks and months I’ll be adding articles on how to get pregnant, tips and techniques to improve your fertility, conceiving a boy, how to conceive a girl, how to get pregnant with twins and much more.
You will also be able to find all of this information for free. I won’t be trying to sell you any of this information, although at a later stage I will probably need to place advertising on the site to help cover my server and hosting costs. I’m good at the moment though – but I thought I’d give you a head up of my plans for this getting pregnant blog in the future.
Trying to get pregnant is a reality for many of us and I read that 1 in 6 women now have problems conceiving or struggle with some form of infertility. Personally I find those statistics shocking and wonder if our lifestyles have something to do with it. I have no proof whatsoever but with the amount of processed foods and polluted air in our lives which has been shown to cause disease and make us sick it would not surprise me at all if the world we live in is also affecting our chances to conceive a baby.
I can’t tell you the definitive answer of what is going to work for you, it may be that you need to take certain vitamins, herbs, or avoid certain foods. Perhaps you have no problems getting pregnant and you just want tips to finally have a gender of baby that you have been trying for.
Whatever your reason for being here, I hope you enjoy my getting pregnant blog on conceiving baby’s as it grows.
Baby Dust to you all.
Throughout history people have been trying to fall pregnant with a baby of their chosen gender so trying to put the odds of conceiving a boy or girl, whatever your preference may be, into your favor is nothing new. Fortunately we now know a lot more about how the body and especially conception works so these days we don’t need to rely on wives tales or myths about what we need to do.
This article will focus primarily on some of the strategies and methods for conceiving a boy using natural methods (rather than laboratory techniques). While choosing the gender of your child via a laboratory is usually more successful (although there still have been many cases of couples not getting the child they thought they were getting), trying methods at home, such as the Shettles Method is safe and doesn’t cost you anything.
Since I’ve already mentioned it, the Shettles Method was introduced in the 1970’s by Dr Landrum Shettles MD PhD and is probably one of the best known methods for falling pregnant with a child with the gender of your choosing.
He discovered that the sperm carrying the X chromosome (female sperm), while stronger and larger, was slower than the sperm carrying the Y chromosome (male sperm) which tended to be faster and lighter but didn’t last as long.
He then surmised that to take advantage of these characteristics, to increase your chances of having a boy baby that you must have intercourse as close to ovulation as possible so that the male sperm would reach the egg first and fertilize it.
Interestingly the Shettles Method is far more successful in producing boy babies (they claim an 85% success rate for males) than it is for girl babies (only a 77% success rate) which is believed to be because it is easier to pinpoint ovulation as it happens rather than 4 days beforehand.
Of course this method is still not 100% guaranteed but it does seem very effective for conceiving a boy baby, so let’s look at the method in more detail.
The Shettles Method for conceiving a boy:
Because timing is important for the Shettles Method, you need to know when the woman is just about to ovulate. This means testing with ovulation predictor kits (OPK’s), body basal temperature methods (charting) or ovulation saliva monitors to pinpoint when you are due to ovulate.
Then you should aim to have intercourse as close to ovulation as possible. The Shettles Method says to start trying 2 days before you ovulate, right up to your ovulation day.
Theoretically this will ensure that the faster male sperm will reach the egg first and be ready to fertilize it before the female sperm have a chance to reach it.
He also has said certain positions favor a boy including any that deposit the sperm right at the cervix so they don’t have as far to travel. These positions include any deep penetration, like the doggie – rear entry positions.
Shettles also advocated that the woman should orgasm either before or at the same time as the man, since this not only helps push the sperm further up the uterus, but also creates a more alkaline pH environment in the woman which makes it easier for the sperm to live longer.
To Try the Shettles Method:
- Have intercourse everyday starting from 2 days before your expected ovulation day right up to the day you ovulate.
- Use the doggie style or other deep penetration position.
- The woman should have an orgasm
- If possible keep the pH levels of your vagina as alkaline as possible – orgasm should take care of that, but also eating thing like red meat and salty snacks will help.
- Men should avoid wearing tight clothes or having hot showers.
This is a good strategy to get a baby boy (of course no plan will ensure it’s a baby boy 100%) but it will put the odds in your favor.
Trying to choose the sex of your baby may seem controversial to some, but to other’s the longing for a child of a certain gender is enough to want to try many different methods to help conceive a girl or boy. While this article will focus specifically on how to conceive a girl using natural techniques that you can try at home, let’s first look at the history behind the techniques:
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