one in four adults smoke in America. If either of you is a smoker, quit for at least a few months before trying to get pregnant.
Compared to nonsmokers, smokers
Have sperm that are less motile (capable of moving spontaneously). Sperm have a long way to go to reach the egg, so they need all the motility they can get.
Have lower sperm counts and more abnormally shaped sperm, which are chromosomally abnormal.
Have more eggs that are chromosomally abnormal.
Have a 50 percent higher rate of miscarriage.
Are two to four times more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy.
Drinking alcohol
Using drugs
Two commonly used drugs can affect male fertility:
Marijuana lowers testosterone levels in males, which isn’t good in the baby-making biz because testosterone is the male hormone responsible for male sexual functioning and sperm production. Sperm counts are lower and sperm are less motile in men who use marijuana regularly.
Anabolic steroids suppress testosterone production and can cause irreversible damage to the sperm production line. Avoid them at all costs.
Maintaining an (un)healthy weight
Being overweight is a huge problem — one that’s getting bigger all the time. Around 20 percent of women of childbearing age in the United States are obese. Overweight women may not ovulate, and if they don’t ovulate, they can’t get pregnant. One Australian study showed that obese women were only half as likely to get pregnant as normal-weight women.
However, being underweight can also interfere with ovulation. Overall, 12 percent of infertility issues are related to being over- or underweight. Fortunately, either losing or gaining weight in these cases results in pregnancy 70 percent of the time.
Issues that may never have crossed your mind
Sometimes, behaviors you may never have considered can negatively affect your chances of pregnancy. Here are a few:
Douching: Washing or cleaning out the vagina using water or an over-the-counter solution is referred to as douching. Although between one-third to one-half of childbearing age women do it, it’s not only unnecessary but also potentially harmful. Women who douche are 73 percent more likely to have pelvic inflammatory disease, which can seriously damage the fallopian tubes and increases the chance of ectopic pregnancy by about the same percentage. Because you want your partner around for a long time, remind her of this statistic: Women who douche are 80 percent more likely to develop cervical cancer.
Not sitting on the couch enough: No, not really — some exercise is definitely good for you. But some sports, like bicycling, may cause testicular damage from the pressure of the bike seat. Women who exercise too heavily may stop having periods (called amenorrhea), and good luck getting pregnant without them.
Spending time in hot tubs and other heat sources: Hot tubs, tight underwear, saunas, steam rooms, and anything else that raises the temperature of the testicles is bad for the boys. Hot tubs may also damage eggs and increase miscarriage rates, so neither of you should be lolling in the hot tub.
Keeping Sex from Becoming a Chore
As unfathomable as it seems, sex while trying to conceive isn’t always fun. Couples often begin to feel a sense of duty and pressure when they segue from spontaneity to planning exactly when to have sex to increase chances of conception. Monitoring rises in body temperature, charting mucus, and even lying down afterward to give the semen time to do its job are just a few of the unromantic actions that can take your sex life from crackin’ to clinical.
Pleasure may take a back seat to the goal of having a baby, and nothing takes the “sexy” out of sex faster than making it feel like work. In fact, if the sex becomes solely about trying to conceive, you may begin to feel a bit like a sperm-producing machine that’s only needed during ovulation, and performance issues can arise (no pun intended).
Choosing the best time for conception
When we talk about the best time for conception, we’re not talking about the phase of the moon or the alignment of the stars; we’re talking about planning to have sex at certain times to increase the odds that you’ll hit the day when an egg is present and ready to be fertilized. Why do you have to plan? Well, not all women have 28-day menstrual cycles — the average menstrual cycle is 38 to 35 days — and ovulation doesn’t always occur on day 14 of the cycle.
Ovulation does, however, always occur 14 days before the next period is due, or, to be more accurate, your partner’s period starts 14 days after ovulation occurs. You can figure out the best timing for your conception efforts in several ways, which we explore in the following sections.
Monitoring ovulation with a kit
Predicting ovulation doesn’t take mind-reading abilities. Simple observation and a few ovulation predictor kits (OPKs) from the pharmacy are all you need to pinpoint the big day. OPKs determine the rise in luteinizing hormone (LH) that occurs just before egg release. Your partner urinates into a cup, dips the test stick into the urine, and reads the results.
