TTC Planning

What resources and steps helped us get pregnant within 4-6 weeks or 2 ovulation cycles of trying? I reiterate some of what I’ve covered in another post, but in a more succinct timeline for your planning benefit.

More than 24 Months to TTC (Trying to Conceive)

• Set actionable goals with your partner on what it would take to feel prepared to have a child. We had a serious discussion as a couple on what it would take for us to have a kid. For us, it meant tackling two critical goals:
  1. Feel financially stable. We estimated the costs of raising children long-term and estimated how much each of us would need to make comfortably in terms of annual income (and paying off student debt). We gave ourselves two years to hit these goals, in a combination of base salary, bonus, equity value, and a side business.
  2. Practice our parenting skills with a dog. We agreed to first become dog parents for two years prior to starting a family. We knew there would be a lot of growing pains raising a dog together, which would lead to skills and lessons similar to raising a child. Becoming dog parents allowed us to make joint parenting decisions, manage the responsibilities of raising a fully dependent life, and explore our roles and philosophy as parents.

12 Months to TTC

• Talk to your GP, get a baseline understanding of your levels and resolve any open health issues. Is there anything you need to adjust or resolve health-wise before getting pregnant? At this point, I made a decision to take care of a few health roadblocks:
  1. Permanently manage my known thyroid issues by removing my thyroid through surgery
  2. Remove my IUD to give my hormones ample time to settle (though most people don’t stop contraception until 3-6 months before they start TTC)
  3. Add meats back into a fairly vegetarian diet (to ensure I get more nutrients and protein)
• Cut out life stressors. The biggest advice my friends gave me was that it would be much easier to conceive if you are stress-free. For me, this meant thinking about how I spend my time and how I can make my daily life more pleasurable. I decided to intentionally carve out more “me time” (for regular meditation, journaling, and exercise) and pursue a more interesting and challenging career. I changed jobs prior to TTC (which downgraded our health benefits) and was in the middle of a global pandemic 3-month lockdown. This wasn’t exactly the least stressful environment to be in. But my mindset was on a good level because of a lot of the work I had been doing around my mental health. Around this time (and after we finally got vaccinated) was the least stressed I have been in my entire life, which likely contributed to our relatively speedy TTC journey.
• Research if pregnancy coverage would be worth it for your situation. Most private health funds require 12-month coverage of pregnancy & birth prior to giving birth. Depending on how you want to give birth and your health coverage situation, you may decide that the cost of monthly health fund investments would be worth the return. Factors to consider include if you want to give birth with a private obstetrician or midwife, if you want to give birth in a private hospital, public hospital, or home birth, and if you plan to primarily use Medicare coverage or have company sponsored health coverage. Run the calculations and invest in the coverage if you need it accordingly.

6 Months to TTC

• Indulge in foods you won’t be able to freely eat while pregnant. Everyone tells you to enjoy drinking alcohol and eating sushi while you can before you have to give it all up when you’re pregnant. Depending on your risk tolerance, you may end up giving up much more in terms of the kinds of food you can indulge in and the places you feel comfortable ordering takeaway food from. It can’t hurt to read up early on what you should be abstaining from during your pregnancy and when you are TTC. Make a list of the foods you will miss and rotate them in regularly while you can! I definitely wish I indulged more with brie and prosciutto paninis and poke bowls before falling pregnant.
• Exercise regularly. While not a requirement, keeping up your physical fitness early on will help you stay active during your pregnancy as you’ve already formed the habit. When you’re pregnant, you should ideally be aiming for at least 30 minutes of cardio a day and add in yoga or pilates. The biggest surprise during pregnancy was how much yoga helped ease my pregnancy aches and pains. I’ve practiced yoga on and off for ten years but during pregnancy, I aim to practice yoga daily.
• Parent yourself. Something to consider is to do some self-work ahead of becoming pregnant to address any unmet needs you have as a child due to your relationship with your parents. For me, this took a lot of self-introspection and some therapy. But being mentally fit can be a huge advantage during your pregnancy and as a first-time parent. Pregnancy is very much like training for a marathon in terms of the nutritional, physical, and mental preparation you can put in to optimize the resulting journey and outcome.

Recommended Resources

• NSW Health Pregnancy Food Guidelines. A comprehensive cheat sheet on strict eating guidelines for pregnant women.
• Pregnancy Food Checker. A great place to check if you should or shouldn’t consider eating something while pregnant (or TTC). By far, the website we would check when we had to check ingredients before ordering meals at a restaurant.

3 Months to TTC

• Start prenatal vitamins. We used Kin Fertility for both men & women prior to falling pregnant. Once pregnant, I switched up my prenatal to a more comprehensive supplement, MegaFood Baby & Me, that had additional vitamins (which I definitely needed as it was extremely tough to eat healthy during my first trimester).
• Invest in clean eating. Around this time, we started increasing organic produce consumption and started drinking only filtered water at home. Eventually, when pregnant, we would prioritize buying, grass-fed, lean, organic, or open-range meats.
• Invest in clean living. We swapped out for low/no-tox living supplies. This meant changing out a lot of our make-up, bathing, and cleaning products. We also upgraded our cookware so we only cook with stainless steel pots and pans, plus our ever faithful cast iron skillet. No non-stick pans here.

Recommended Resources

• Clean Products Upgrade. A summary of our thought process and specific products we swapped in as part of our conception journey.
• It Starts with an Egg. I used the resources here but never read the book, though friends found the book very helpful.
• Real Food for Pregnancy. I was gifted this book by a nurse friend mid-way through my pregnancy. Wish I found this sooner!

2 Months to TTC

• Use Ovulation Kits. Tracking our ovulation schedule allowed us to optimally time would be for us to TTC (and how to adjust business travel plans to fit our schedule). We opted for a low-tech ovulation kit Pregmate to get the job done.
• Use fertility-friendly lube. Going back to the philosophy of reducing toxins or endocrine disruptors, some of these products can reduce your swimmers’ chances of making it to the goal line. We used Kin’s Fertility Lube and BabyDance.

1 Month to TTC

• Have fun with it! You’ve already put in a lot of the heavy lifting and preparation. Don’t put too much pressure on yourselves and honestly, enjoy the experience.

Recommended Resources

• Expecting Better. If you want to get ahead and start reading a pregnancy book while TTC, this is the one pregnancy book I rate the highest as it is quite data-driven and practical. It’s written by an Economics Professor who dissects various studies regarding pregnancy. I read this while pregnant but can be beneficial to start earlier.
• The Expectant Father. This is the one book my partner recommends because it’s well-paced and sufficiently detailed enough to keep up with my own pregnancy learnings.