Everything I learned when trying to conceive
I thought getting pregnant would be easy. It was—until it wasn’t.
I wrote this post out a few months ago when I was in the thick of trying to conceive (TTC) and updated it as my second pregnancy journey went on. When I got pregnant with my first, it wasn’t nearly as complicated.
Because of the nature of my job, almost daily women were asking me what to do, what to avoid, and what I did to get pregnant. In truth, I didn’t have a good answer for them. This time around, my experience was vastly different and so I wore I would document in a way that I could share with my girlfriends.
Even if you aren’t in this stage of life, I hope that you find this insight meaningful. I truly believe that women are the largest source of knowledge transfer and the more we talk about taboo things, the more informed we are to make decisions that are best for ourselves and our families.
In this column you’ll find:
📲 Why your fertility app might be lying to you (and what to use instead)
🧪 The tests and numbers worth knowing before you start trying
💊 The supplements, foods, and small habits that made a difference for me
🩺 How I tracked ovulation without losing my mind
💬 The honest, unfiltered reality of my own TTC journey
💗 And the small rituals that helped me stay hopeful
⬆️ This week’s highs: We’ve started the process of making design decisions in the house! I’m in wallpaper hell, but I guess that’s a good thing? Im just trying to knock off as many things off my list as possible everyday but it seems like shoveling quicksand to be honest.
⬇️ This week’s lows: I’ve been missing my dad a lot lately. It’s been about a year and a half since he passed and his birthday is coming up in November, on Thanksgiving actually. When my husband’s family started asking about Thanksgiving plans I casually said yes and then looked at the calendar. It didn’t make sense to say no? But, I finally understand Luke’s dark day.
Scandal — ironically. I’m usually a “happy tv only” persona, but this has become my background noise. I’m still skipping by the gorey parts but man I forgot how quickly they speak. They put Lorelei & Rory to shame.
If you want to try a sunscreen that gives you a bit of a glow, there’s a reason why this one is famous. You have to try it with OR without makeup. It is a cult clean-favorite that has no white cast, slightly tinted, and no smell or stickiness. It is also pregnancy, nursing and sensitive skin safe!
I did some digging of what makes a good face mask, which ones are worth the money and I featured this sleeping mask as best for overnight hydration and tired skin. I use it before an event or on a lazy Sunday.
Can you do me a favor? If you like this, will you hit the heart ❤️ at the bottom of your email? I pinky promise it helps me and will only take you a second!
My TTC Journey
I’ve always been an extremely research-driven person. And in my first pregnancy, after I announced, I got so many questions about what I did when trying to conceive.
Being younger, four years younger than I am now, it was a lot easier. We didn’t “try” in the intense, charting, thermometer way. We just… tried. And I got pregnant the first time.
That pregnancy ended in an early miscarriage. We decided to take a break after that. Six months later, we tried again. I thought I was outside of my so-called fertility window that my trusty app on my phone told me I was in, but that first time, we got pregnant again.
Back then, I didn’t truly understand the pitfalls of trying to conceive or how difficult it can be physically, mentally, and emotionally: specifically for women. This time around, I have a newfound appreciation for the journey that women go through in order to try to conceive.
While my timeline is not nearly as long as a lot of other women’s, it was long enough for my husband and me to have a real conversation about: would we be okay with one child?
His immediate thought was “yes”. He said, it would be completely fine for us to just raise our daughter and be happy with our lives and not go through the enormous strain mentally, physically, emotionally, and financially of exploring IVF or other treatments. Of course, that made total sense.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t ready to make that commitment out loud. I said that after a couple of months, we’d see where we were at. We gave ourselves a timeline, and said we’d push to see a fertility specialist after that point.
I ended up getting pregnant the month before. But here are the things I did when trying to conceive.
Understanding the Mechanics
Trying to conceive is extremely difficult. It puts a lot of pressure on the woman. And while men will sometimes say it’s stressful for them too, I can’t help but laugh a little. Yes, it takes two people, but manufacturing romance on command? Let’s just say that part’s not easy for either side.
But what matters more than anything is understanding the mechanics of your body.
There are only 12 to 48 hours in which an egg can be fertilized every month.
Sperm can live in your body for several days, which is why the time leading up to ovulation is usually more important than the time after.
Almost everyone has a 10 to 14 day window after ovulation (known as the luteal phase) where your egg either “sticks” or your uterine lining starts to shed (aka your period).
I found out that I have a shorter luteal phase: closer to 10 or 11 days, which could explain why I had early miscarriages. Anything between eight to ten days is considered medically short, and that can make it harder for an embryo to implant. That was one thing I had no idea about.
Generally speaking, during your luteal phase, your progesterone levels are rising. Those levels need to be high enough to support implantation. Some women go on progesterone supplements during this time to help, which is something I considered too. I was planning to ask my doctor about this the following month.
Why Apps Alone Don’t Work
Period tracking apps are great for getting to know your body, but they’re not perfect. The problem is, they base predictions off averages (yes even your self reported averages). If you just follow those dates blindly, you can miss critical windows.
So yes, the period app can tell you the number of days in your cycle. You can have a 20 day, 28 day, or a 30 day cycle and it will continue to predict that. But doesn’t actually know at what point you ovulate because it doesn’t have that data. You can ovulate in the beginning of that window or at the end. It just traditionally takes 14 days into account. Yikes.
Let’s talk a little bit about your cycle. Day one of your period is actually day one of your cycle and I know it seems like you want to finish your period and then start counting days, but no. Your period will usually last five to seven days and then after that you are in your ovulation window.
Now you can ovulate earlier or you can ovulate later, but it’s usually around between day 7 and day 14.
After that, day 14 to day 28 is usually when you’re in your luteal phase. And that’s when it either sticks or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t, your period will start. Now, this is like a traditional 28 cycle. As you know, most people do not have a traditional 28 day cycle.
So that means that you can ovulate anywhere in that window. And that means your days after ovulation are really important because that’s when you can see whether or not your pregnancy will actually stick. So one of the things that I think is really important is that you start to confirm ovulation.
How to Actually Track Ovulation
There are three main ways to track ovulation, and I personally think combining them gives you the best shot.
1. Basal Body Temperature (BBT)
Your body temperature naturally rises when you ovulate and stays high until your period. Tracking that shift can confirm that ovulation happened.
Traditionally, women use a thermometer at the same time each morning and chart their results. Aside from the admin of it, I tried that and found it completely unreliable… different readings depending on how I moved or the time I took my temperature.
Devices like the Oura Ring can track your temperature automatically while you sleep, which makes life much easier.
(More on how that worked for me below)
2. Cervical Mucus
Some women track their cervical mucus, which becomes clearer and stretchier (like egg whites) before ovulation. Personally, I didn’t find this useful.
3. Ovulation Prediction Kits (OPKs)
OPKs test your urine for a surge in luteinizing hormone (LH), which happens 24–48 hours before ovulation.
I’m not sure why, but this was a bit harder for me to understand off the bat. I’ll share exactly how I used them and how I learned my app was two full days off when I go into detail below. But I think this was the biggest key to getting pregnant for me.
If you’re “trying” but you’re only going off an app, you may not be really trying yet.
Why I’m Sharing This
This is what worked for me. I don’t know if it’s going to be helpful or if it’s even new information for anyone trying to conceive, but I realized after so many conversations with friends: girlfriends, moms, friends who want to be moms, and even friends who don’t want kids right now, that we just don’t talk about this enough.
Girls aren’t taught about their bodies. Women aren’t taught how to plan or not plan for pregnancy. And honestly, the only way this kind of information gets shared is woman to woman.
So, in the spirit of everything I’ve spent a decade of my life building i.e. being transparent, honest, and helpful I wanted to share what I’ve learned.
That being said, a large part of this post will be behind a paywall. Substack’s minimum is $5 a month if you subscribe annually, or $6 if you go month-to-month. The reason I’m doing that is simple: this is very personal information. I want to protect my privacy while still being open with the women who care to read it fully.
If you’re going to take the time to read this, I hope you’ll read it in its entirety. Sharing personal details of my life isn’t something I take lightly. Supporting my work helps me keep creating content like this, where I can be honest and vulnerable while maintaining boundaries.
✨ Behind the paywall: the actual play-by-play. What I think worked for me. Everything I did from tracking my cycle, testing my hormones, the supplements I took, food changes, how I used the Oura Ring (and what I think about the controversy), honest experience with Mucinex, beets, pomegranate juice, acupuncture, and even the mental coping mechanisms that helped me stay sane month after month.