Top 10 Natural Strategies for Conception (aka How to Get Pregnant!)

Welcome to the March Carnival of Natural Parenting: Natural Parenting Top 10 Lists

This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared Top 10 lists on a wide variety of aspects of attachment parenting and natural living. Please read to the end to find a list of links to the other carnival participants.

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I’ve had lots of folks ask me how I got pregnant after healing from Graves’ disease (autoimmune hyperthyroidism) and previously undiagnosed Celiac disease. Then I had extended lactional amenorrhea ; my period didn’t return until 29 months postpartum. But, each time I was ready to conceive, we got pregnant on the first try. Some I attribute to luck, but I also take credit for working hard to make sure that my body was as ready as it could be.

Here are some suggestions I would make to anyone thinking about trying to conceive (TTC). I’m focusing on the mama’s health, but of course it’s important for the father to be paying attention to his nutrition, too, and a sperm issue should always be ruled out if things seem to be taking a long time. But in most cases, these ten strategies should be about all you need if there isn’t something more serious going on (and maybe even if there is!)

1. Read about your body

Anyone considering pregnancy would be well served by first reading Taking Charge of Your Fertility and Garden of Fertility. The journey really starts here to understand your body’s fertility signs and to get clear on what might be going on with your cycles. These books explain how even light in your bedroom can affect your fertility and a whole bunch of other stuff you will likely not get from a doctor.

Me with my son after my motherblessing, 8 days before baby girl arrived

If you think of your body in a loving, nurturing way, you will train yourself to be a good parent and be more likely to have your body happy to work with you. Become an expert on yourself and your fertility the way you would a child who had a particular need or condition.

Another great book to read if you are at all concerned about your toxic load is Sandra Steingraber’s Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood. It just might make you want to wait a little longer and detox from medications, environmental pollutants, and unhealthy eating before your body becomes a home (and, later, food source) for a little being.

2. Consider your diet

Nina Planck’s book, Real Food for Mother and Baby, is my go-to resource to explain how to get the nutrition a preconceptual body needs. The short version: eat plenty of fat from good sources (avocado, coconut, grassfed dairy, wild fish, and pastured eggs and meat), avoid sugar and processed food.

Make sure you are getting enough fat: forget low-fat items that are processed/non-whole food! If you’re vegetarian, think about animal fat/protein sources you might feel comfortable with. I was near-vegan in 2003, subsisting largely off of soy and grain, and I hadn’t had a period for 3.5 months when a nutrition counselor convinced me to lay off the soy and start eating eggs and full-fat dairy. I ovulated two weeks later and began having regular periods.

Down the line, I eliminated gluten, dairy, corn and soy, and I’ve recently eliminated grain/starch/sugar on the GAPS diet. If you are eating something your body can’t tolerate, it is not in a good place to conceive. So consider food sensitivities. And, if you’ve had a restricted (especially vegan) diet for a long time, consider vitamin and mineral deficiencies. A good health counselor can talk you through this and get you some testing that might give some clues.

And no matter what, eat lots of organic produce! And probiotic foods.

3. Get acupuncture

This healing modality can help increase circulation, regulate hormones, decrease stress and physical pain and just generally open your body, mind, and spirit up to creating a new life. When I went in around the time of conception, my practitioner did a few extra spots to let my body be a good “host.” And then when I went in just two weeks after conception, she put in one needle that positively buzzed with energy in a way I’d never felt before because I was carrying the beginning of a new life. Pretty cool!

4. Get chiropractic

If there is a structural issue in your way, chiropractic might be worth consulting. Perhaps you had a car accident or a fall many years ago , and your hips never quite realigned. Or maybe your neck has a constant problem that is influencing your thyroid or a nerve near your pituitary. Get checked out!

At a chiropractic conference, I met a practitioner who developed a method called Mercier Therapy, which has been successful at helping women with fertility issues related to endometriosis, scar tissue and other problems. One session with Dr. Mercier working on my c-section scar (after my home VBAC) made a dramatic difference. Dr. Mercier studied a lot of osteopathy to come up with her method, which leads me to my next point.

5. Get energy work

Sometimes there are more subtle nuances at work at the cellular level. Our bodies carry memories of emotions, traumas, events, and sometimes this energy can get stuck. Craniosacral therapy or cranial work with an osteopath can help release some of this energy. I am convinced that both of my pregnancies were assisted by CST. The first time, the practitioner commented specifically on energy around my ovary shortly before ovulation, and I think he helped things move in the right direction. The second time, I had several treatments in the weeks prior to conception because I ran into a glass door (d’oh!) and was very bruised on my nose. That same CST practitioner said the force was so strong it actually let him into my sinus cavity area such that he could work on trauma from my own birth (and my asymmetrical facial structure). I think this might have helped my pituitary, and also just taking the time to slow down and give my body attention was probably necessary for me to conceive.

Other energy modalities that might help include Reiki, chakra healing and crystal healing.

6. Do saliva hormone testing

Blood tests only provide part of the picture on a certain day; they don’t tell you about your whole menstrual cycle. A more comprehensive look at what is going on with your body can be found through a cycle-long saliva test through DiagnosTechs. At 11 different points during your cycle, you spit into a tube, and when you’re done, you send the tubes off to the company that will provide you and your practitioner with a report that shows the arc of your cycle compared to optimal hormone levels. This will show if you have estrogen dominance (too much estrogen related to progesterone), for which you might try using some progesterone cream and you would for sure stop eating or using all phytoestrogens (including soy) and xenoestrogens (including plastic containers). It could show a quick drop in a hormone after ovulation, or a low level throughout, for which supplements might be indicated.

Reproductive hormone issues are often related with adrenal hormone issues, so your practitioner might recommend diet or other lifestyle changes depending on what your profile suggests. There are also panels specifically for adrenal health and other hormone issues that can be done at different points throughout the day to see what your cortisol levels are doing compared to what would be expected.

My first test in 2005 showed estrogen dominance with my very long cycles. Within a short time of starting progesterone cream, I ovulated and conceived my son. My test in 2009 showed much more average hormone levels. How interesting to see what difference time — time in general and time off the Pill — and a changed diet could do!

7. Do yoga

In addition to helping you manage stress and to oxygenate your body with all that great breathwork, yoga can offer therapeutic benefits for a number of conditions. Certain poses, like cobbler’s pose or butterfly pose, are great for bringing circulation to the reproductive system. The Iyengar yoga book, Path to Holistic Health, has several series of poses for different fertility-related issues.

Days before I conceived my son, I walked out of a yoga class where the energy just didn’t feel right. I came home and, with my Iyengar book at hand, did my own practice that I believe helped things go in the right direction!

8. Clear your emotional baggage

Okay, this one is a life-long process. But seriously, try to unleash your burden before 1) some of it gets passed on to your baby and 2) you become a sleep-deprived parent. If you are holding a lot of fear or anger, that’s not a good foundation for a new being, and it might be blocking your body from creating one. So free your mind, and the rest will follow. Work with a practitioner who does a meridian tapping technique like Emotional Freedom Technique or Be Set Free Fast, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). Or consider hypnotherapy. Mainstream talk therapy is great, too, but adding in these modalities can energetically re-set you in some powerful ways. So can flower essences and essential oils.

9. Laugh, sing, dance (and bellydance!)

Joy is what you want your baby to be born into, right? So cultivate it and inhabit it. Find some old school tunes you haven’t heard in a while, or discover a new artist that you want to sing to at the top of your lungs. Believe in your body’s beauty through dance. There are volumes written about how bellydance in particular can increase fertility — check out some research or just get yourself to a class!

10. Imagine your empowering, orgasmic birth each time you have sex

Okay, this one isn’t so much necessarily going to contribute to your likelihood of conceiving. But if you’ve gotten to think of sex as a chore, well, just imagine how you’ll feel about parenting! Approach sex full-on for its own sake, and imagine — not to stress you out, but just to keep you positive — that each act of intimacy could be the predictor of a birth experience nine months down the line. Ina May Gaskin and others have said that your birth experience mirrors the act of conception, and when I thought back to my son’s conception (described in this poem of mine), it made sense how he ended up with a short cord that necessitated a c-section. So get in it to win it every time!

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Visit Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama to find out how you can participate in the next Carnival of Natural Parenting!

Please take time to read the submissions by the other carnival participants:

(This list will be live and updated by afternoon March 8 with all the carnival links.)

• Attachment Parenting in the NICU — Erica at ChildOrganics shares some strategies to help you parent naturally in some unnatural circumstances.
• 10 Reasons to Choose Baby Led Weaning — Luschka from Diary of a First Child shares ten reasons to choose Baby Led Weaning when it comes to solids.
• Choosing to Breastfeed — From selfishness to self-giving, CatholicMommy at Working to be Worthy lists reasons why breast is best for her and her family.
• Ten Things I Wish I Knew About Before Little Man — In this reflective post, The ArstyMama discusses ten things she wishes she knew more about before the birth of her son, Little Man.
• 10 Things That Helped Me Become a Natural Mama — The Accidental Natural Mama counts down ten things that helped her find her moderately crunchy inner mama self.
• Top 10 Reasons to Breastfeed Your Toddler — Extended breast-feeder Kate Wicker of Momopoly makes her own top 10 list for why she loves nursing her 2-year-old.
• Top 10 Tips on Authentic Grandparenting — Mamapoekie of Authentic Parenting offers a list of tips to make the grandparent-parent-child relationship flow smoothly.
• Top Ten “Dad” Things — Liam at In The Now talks about his favourite ways to spend time with his children.
• Top 10 Natural Strategies for Conception (aka How to Get Pregnant!) — Despite facing plenty of health issues, Jessica Claire at Crunchy-Chewy Mama found her way to two first-try pregnancies thanks to these natural strategies.
• Top Ten Reasons Why Home Birth Rocks — Lucy at Dreaming Aloud shares her passion for birthing at home – the natural place for natural birth.
• Top 10 reasons why cloth nappies are fun — Tat at Cloth Nappies Are Fun shows how using cloth nappies can brighten up your day.
• Top Ten Ways to Be Present With Family — Amy at Innate Wholeness shares how to make the most of parenting and family life through being present.
• Top 10 Things In My Arsenal of Kitchen Witchy Mama Tricks. — Joni Rae at Tales of A Kitchen Witch shares with us the simple things she would never want to be missing from her cupboards.
• Top 10 ways I’m not very good at natural parenting (and why I keep trying anyway) — Jenny at Babyfingers shares the ways she is imperfect as a natural parent, and why she embraces natural parenting anyway.
• Top 10 Ways to Know You Are a Natural Parent — So what makes us “natural parents,” anyway? A lighthearted look at the Top 10 Ways to Know You Are a Natural Parent by the editors and readers of Natural Parents Network.
• The Top 10 Things Every Natural Household (with children) Should Have — Amanda at Let’s Take the Metro shares a list of the most common natural products and remedies she uses for health and cleaning.
• Top 10 books for raising loving, spiritual children — In her ‘food for the soul’ post, Mrs Green from Little Green Blog shares her favourite spiritual books. No matter what religion you practise, there’s something for everyone!
• Top 10 Things No One Told Me About Natural Parenting — Adrienne at Mommying My Way explains that the best things about natural parenting are things she never expected.
• Top 10 Flower Essences for Families — Kim of Nature Baby Bloggings lists her pick of the top ten flower essence which can help ease families through the ups and downs of life.
• My Top Ten Parenting Tools — Amyables at Toddler In Tow names the top ten tools that have been helpful to her while learning to parent respectfully and successfully.
• Ten Ways Families Can Enjoy Nature (for free!) — Spring is nearly in the air, and Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction is dreaming of the fun and frugal ways that her family is going to get out and enjoy nature this summer.
• 10 Reasons We Unschool — Patti at Jazzy Mama explains why unschooling is the right choice for her family.
• Must Read: Natural Parenting Top Ten — Amy at Anktangle wants you to do a little reading! She shares her top ten favorite books to help parents prepare for pregnancy, birth, and parenting.
• Top 10 Breastfeeding Misconceptions — Sheila at A Gift Universe examines ten reasons women give for why they didn’t breastfeed as long as they wanted, and shows how these obstacles can be overcome.
• Ten Reasons to Plan a Home Birth — Since a home birth can be an incredibly empowering experience, Leslie at Lights and Letters outlines ten reasons why you should plan to have your baby at home.
• Top Ten Books for Birth, Breastfeeding and Parenting — Megan at Just Me(gan) writes about the ten books that have helped her the most in her natural parenting journey.
• A Top Ten Letter To Me… — Kat at Loving {Almost} Every Moment writes herself a letter of reflections and bits of wisdom she would have liked to know as a new mama.
• Top Ten Mama Necessities Money Can’t Buy — Buying baby gear is fun, but Emily at Crunchy(ish) Mama knows real parenting must-haves can’t be bought in stores (or even on Amazon).
• Top 10 Books for a Natural Mum — Isil at Smiling like Sunshine talks about her Top 10 Books for a Natural Mum.
• Ten Great Spring Activities To Do With Preschoolers — Kellie at Our Mindful Life and her family have come up with a great list of activities to do together this spring.
• 10 Ways to Reuse Yogurt Containers — Acacia at Fingerpaint & Superheroes keeps the stacks of yogurt containers out of her recycling bin by reusing them in both practical and creative ways.
• Top Ten Ways To Have a Harmonious Home — Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama shares her natural parenting-inspired methods for maintaining a harmonious daily life with her toddler.
• 10 Natural Baby Items I Love — Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama shares product ideas to support your natural parenting.
• The Pandas’ Top Five Crunch-osophies — Top five crunchy philosophies, as employed at the Panda Residence by Ana at Pandamoly.
• Top 10 Reasons to Leave Your Son Intact — Mandy at Living Peacefully with Children has shared 10 reasons why you should leave your newborn son intact.
• Ten things everyone should know about unassisted homebirth — Olivia at Write About Birth shares practical tips for women considering an unassisted homebirth and debunks some common myths
• 10 Most Popular Ways To Treat Cloth Diaper Stains — Chante at My Natural Motherhood Journey gives ten easy tips to make your diapers like new.
• 10 Lessons in 1 Year — Abbie at Farmer’s Daughter shares 10 parenting lessons that she has learned throughout her first year of motherhood.
• Top 10 Ways to Get Breastfeeding Off To a Good Start — Sheryl at Little Snowflakes shares 10 effective ways to ensure breastfeeding gets off to a good start.
• Top 10 Ways to Avoid a Time-Out — If you are uncomfortable using time-outs in an attempt to control your child’s behavior, try one of these gentler alternatives. Dionna at Code Name: Mama shares her Top 10 Ways to Avoid a Time-Out.
• My Top 10 Parenting Scriptures — Dulce de leche is learning to integrate faith and parenting. Whether it is breastfeeding, babywearing, comforting her children, or gentle discipline, she finds that the Bible has beautiful passages to encourage her on her journey.
• Natural Cleaning Ideas – Top 10 — Laura at Laura’s Blog lists the ways she keeps her house clean and clear of chemicals.
• My Top Ten (plus two) Life Altering and Growth Inspiring Books — A top ten list of books from MJ at Wander Wonder Discover that changed her life as an individual, a parent, and an earth dweller.
• Top 10 Ways to Use Natural Parenting for Children with Special Needs — Danielle at Mommy Makes Cents feeds the needs of her family and special needs child through the use of Natural Parenting.
• Ten Fundamentals — Seonaid at The Practical Dilettante gets philosophical with a list of the fundamentals that drive her natural parenting.
• 10 reasons why I chose breast over bottles — Becky at Old New Legacy writes a quick list of why she chose breast over bottles.
• Top Ten Natural Tools for the Work of Play — Lori at Beneath the Rowan Tree offers insight into 10 natural toys that will span the early years (and save you money).
• 10 differences between pregnancy and parenting in Japan and the US — Megan at Ichigo Means Strawberry gives her impressions about differences in pregnancy and parenting in Japan and the US.
• Natural Parenting Benny & Bex Style — Pecky at Benny and Bex explains why Natural Parenting principles work best for her boys.
• Top 10 Reasons to Co-Sleep — 10 practical, emotional, and completely selfish reasons to co-sleep and share a family bed from Lily, aka Witch Mom.
• My Top Ten New Mommy Moments — Melissa at The New Mommy Files recounts the ten most memorable moments of her daughter’s first year.
• Top Ten Things Every Breastfeeding Mother Needs to Know — Kristen at Adventures in Mommyhood believes knowledge is power and wants all moms to be well informed.
• Top 10 Nursing Positions / Situations — Momma Jorje uses her 5½ years of nursing experience to share her Top 10 Nursing Positions/Situations. She includes some adorable photos of her youngest daughter at the breast.
• Ten Top Ways to Connect Kids with Nature — Terri from Child at the Nature Isle offers 10 ways to immerse ourselves in the natural world and develop a love affair with the Earth.
• Top 10 Slacker Ways to Natural Parent — Guavalicious is happy to show you how to parent naturally the slacker way.
• Simply what it looks like — Andrea!!! from Ella-Bean & Co. offers a glimpse into natural parenting through the eyes of mama and babe.
• Top Ten Reasons Why Natural Parenting Dads Are So Attractive — Nada at miniMOMist sure digs her husband, but it’s not just his good looks — it’s his parenting!
• 10 Family Systems and Routines That Work for Us — See what routines, organizational systems, and parenting approaches work for Kristin at Intrepid Murmurings to help avoid conflict and maintain sanity in a family with three young children.
• Top 10 reasons to choose midwifery care — Lauren at Hobo Mama lists the features that drew her to midwives’ care for pregnancy and birth.
• 10 Ways to Cloth Diaper on a Budget — Michelle at The Parent Vortex shares her best thrifty cloth diapering tips.
• Ten Reasons it Felt Sew Good To Make My Own Play Food — Brittany at Mama’s Felt Cafe lists her 10 (OK, 11) favorite reasons to grab a needle and start sewing your own felt play toys.
• Top10 Ways to Spark Interest, Learn, and Have Fun With Everyday Tasks! — Bethy at Bounce Me to the Moon gives you her top 10 ways of incorporating fun and lessons into everyday tasks and chores.
• Postpartum Gift Ideas — Alicia at I Found My Feet suggests a top 10 list of gifts for mother’s after giving birth.
• My Top Ten Shows Worthy Of Screen Time — Tree at Mom Grooves shares her top ten list of shows that she believes are positive, educational, kind, joyful, and a nice way to share some downtime with your children.
• The Top 10 Ways to Succeed as an Working Attachment Parent — That Mama Gretchen shares tried and true ways to succeed with attachment parenting even when working away from home during the day.
• Top Ten Books for Natural Parenting — Pregnancy, herbs, cooking, and healthcare the ten books Asha at Meta Mom the most.
• Preparing for a Hospital VBAC: My Top 10 — Thomasin at Propson Palingenesis shares 10 ways she’s preparing for her upcoming hospital VBAC.
• Top Ten New Mom Survival Tools — Wolfmother shares her most beloved motherhood survival tools at Fabulous Mama Chronicles.
• Top 10 Montessori Principles for Natural Learning — Deb Chitwood at Living Montessori Now gives her top 10 list of Montessori principles parents can use to encourage their children s natural learning.
• Going Granola — Tashmica from The Mother Flippin’ Blog describes the 10 ways that natural parenting sneaked up on her. She never expected to go all granola on the world.
• Step Away From the Amazon List — Stefanie at Very, Very Fine wishes she hadn’t bought so much useless stuff.