A Step-By-Step Guide to Get Pregnant Quickly and Naturally
Here’s the truth: getting pregnant isn’t easy for every woman. And here’s an even bigger truth: you can conceive naturally even if you’ve been told otherwise.
If you’re struggling with infertility, conventional doctors will say treatments like IVF or IUI are your best bet, but that simply isn’t true. Those treatments are expensive, taxing on your body, and aren’t as successful as their marketing claims want you to believe.
Plus, why would you settle for a treatment when you can be healed?
The functional medicine approach to fertility gets to the root cause of what’s been keeping you from growing your family as fast as you’d like to. This approach is all about figuring out exactly how to give your body the support it needs to grow a healthy, thriving baby.
You don’t have to wait until you’ve gotten a diagnosis to decide that now’s the time to take your fertility into your own hands. But knowing what to do and when to do it can make preconception planning overwhelming. So here’s a step-by-step guide to walk you through the process.
Step One: Get off Birth Control
When you’ve got baby making on your mind, getting off birth control may seem like an obvious first step, but there are a surprising number of doctors who recommend staying on the pill until you’re absolutely ready to conceive. And even though your OB-GYN will likely say you can start trying for a baby immediately after stopping hormonal contraception, it’s best to do proper preconception planning—especially since most women take a few months for their menstrual cycle to regulate.
When you’re on hormonal birth control like the pill, the patch, or ring, you don’t have a “real” period. Since birth control works by preventing ovulation, no eggs are released from the ovaries. And without ovulation, there’s no true menstrual period.
During the week that you’re not taking active hormones (the placebo week on most birth control pill packs, for example), you'll likely experience something that resembles a period, but it’s not the same thing. Your “pill period” is merely withdrawal bleeding triggered by the sudden drop in hormone levels in your body.
The synthetic hormones in birth control don’t just stop your body from ovulating. They suppress the normal functioning of your hypothalamus and pituitary gland, which are key players in your body's hormone regulation system. This is the real reason why it’s so important to break up with birth control sooner rather than later. We need the pituitary gland to be signaling to the ovaries to balance hormones naturally without being blocked. We need to reestablish that connection.
When you stop taking hormonal birth control, it’s common to experience irregular menstrual cycles as your pituitary gland returns to its regularly scheduled job duties. It’s normal for your body to need some time to adjust from the synthetic hormones it was receiving to its own natural hormone production. Every woman will have her own unique experience getting off of birth control, and if you’d like any guidance with this process, you can book a one-on-one Fertility Consult to make sure all your questions are answered.
Step Two: Establish a Regular Menstrual Cycle
The symptoms of irregular periods have been normalized for so long that it’s important to clarify what your monthly visit from Aunt Flo is actually supposed to look like. Your menstrual cycle should be somewhere between 28-32 days—ideally, it’s between 28 and 30. You should be bleeding for 5 to 6 days. It should be a true red blood (no hues of purple, brown, or pink). And there should be absolutely no spotting, cramping, or clotting.
Your period is the biggest indicator of your health and fertility. That’s why so many people call it your monthly report card. And if it’s not happening every 28-30 days, with a healthy color and consistency and no cramping or spotting—your body’s struggling.
Establishing a healthy menstrual cycle before trying to get pregnant is important for several reasons:
Improved Chance of Conception: Predictable healthy periods help you know when you’re most fertile and increases your chances of conceiving.
Healthier Pregnancy: Good preconception health, which includes a healthy menstrual cycle, can help prevent pregnancy complications. A healthy period requires adequate nutrients, which are absolutely essential for growing a baby to full term. If you’re not experiencing healthy periods and do manage to get pregnant—there’s an increased risk for complications, including miscarriage and premature birth.
Indication of Potential Health Issues: Irregular and painful periods are your body’s way of talking to you. It can be an indicator of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), endometriosis, or another obstacle getting in the way of a successful pregnancy.
When your hormones are in harmony, and your pathways are clear, you should have symptom-free periods. If your periods don’t look like that, schedule a Fertility Consult to get your menstrual cycle back on track.
Step Three: Test and Balance Your Hormones
Healthy periods are usually a sign that you’re ovulating. However, it's possible to have what appears to be a regular menstrual cycle without actually ovulating—a condition known as anovulation. Hormonal imbalances are the main cause of anovulation, and research suggests that as many as one third of seemingly normal periods might actually be eggless.
If you’re not ovulating, you won’t get pregnant. But there’s another big concern too—if you’re not ovulating, your progesterone levels will be extremely low. The majority of progesterone is produced after ovulation, so if you’re not ovulating, your hormones are definitely out of whack. Low levels of progesterone can lead to an overabundance of estrogen, imbalanced cortisol production, and thyroid dysfunction.
Supplementing with synthetic hormones isn’t the answer because they simply force the body to do what it’s supposed to do, but they don’t actually address why your body isn’t able to do it on its own naturally. Getting the proper functional fertility tests done is the only true way to get an accurate snapshot of your health and deep insights into your body.
At your typical doctor’s appointment, they might test your hormones, but what that really means is they’re testing all your hormones in one lump sum. They’re not testing estrogen at day 3. They’re not testing progesterone at day 21. So they don’t know the trajectory of your hormones throughout your menstrual cycle. All they’re looking at is a general number that tells us very little. And this is why so many women end up getting diagnosed with “unexplained fertility.”
There is no such thing as unexplained infertility in our book. There is a reason why someone isn’t able to get pregnant, and you deserve a full picture of where you stand and why. Booking a Fertility Consult and having Functional Fertility Labs done at Magnolia Wellness will tell you exactly what’s going on with your hormones, get to the root cause of any fertility issues you may have, and show you what needs to be done to get your body back in balance.
Step Four: Unclog Your Drainage Pathways and Detox
We live in a toxic world that our bodies were not designed for. Everyday we’re exposed to harmful man-made chemicals that we breathe in, absorb through our skin, and ingest. This is exactly why it’s important to make sure your detox pathways are clear so your body can properly eliminate all these toxins.
The liver is the most important here as it’s the main organ responsible for detoxification. It’s absolutely necessary to make sure your liver is open so it can filter and cleanse your blood because that blood is going to be flowing through your ovaries and nourishing your eggs. Your liver actually performs hundreds of functions and is needed to filter out built-up toxins, process nutrients, and regulate your hormones. It works together with your kidneys, large intestine, lymphatic system, and sweat glands to remove waste—but this can’t happen if your drainage pathways aren’t open.
Some medical professionals say that there’s no need for us to detox and that our bodies can do it on their own. That opinion was formed before environmental pollutants like car exhaust, cigarette smoke, and pesticides turned the world into a chemical soup. Nowadays, our foods have preservatives, the tap water is tainted with prescription drugs, and our homes are full of flame retardants, BPA, and artificial fragrances. If you want all 5 pathways open and functioning at optimal levels under these conditions, your body’s going to need a little help.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to detoxing, as it’s a complex process that involves multiple organs and systems in the body. Book a Fertility Consult to learn more about ways you can get one-on-one guidance for the right steps to take to do a detox for your reproductive health.
Step Five: Reduce Inflammation
What do depression, diabetes, heart disease, chronic fatigue, asthma, and infertility all have in common? Each of these health conditions has inflammation as a common denominator.
And while correlation certainly doesn’t equal causation, it’s safe to say that most of today’s modern diseases are perpetuated by chronic inflammation. Signs of chronic inflammation in your body include fatigue, swelling, bloating, constipation, dry eyes, blurry vision, ringing in your ears, muscle weakness, achy joints, skin issues, and headaches.
Inflammation is your body’s response to anything it perceives as stressful. When it’s an acute response to protect you from something harmful, it’s actually a good thing. But chronic inflammation can wreak havoc on your body and can become a huge speed bump on your path to pregnancy. Chronic inflammation occurs when the illness or threat that triggered the inflammatory response isn’t resolved. When inflammation becomes chronic, it lingers for weeks, months or even years.
Chronic inflammation can contribute to infertility in several ways, including:
Damage to Reproductive Tissues: Chronic inflammation can cause damage to cells and tissues in the reproductive organs, such as eggs, sperm, fallopian tubes, or the uterine lining, impairing their normal functioning.
Disruption of Hormonal Balance: Inflammatory cytokines (proteins released by immune cells during inflammation) can disrupt the delicate balance of hormones needed for ovulation and conception. For instance, inflammation can interfere with the production of progesterone, a hormone necessary for maintaining pregnancy.
Endometriosis and PCOS: Conditions characterized by chronic inflammation like endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are associated with infertility. In endometriosis, inflammation caused by the presence of endometrial-like tissue outside the uterus can lead to scarring and adhesions that block the fallopian tubes. In PCOS, inflammation contributes to insulin resistance and an overproduction of androgens, leading to ovulation problems.
Impaired Implantation: Inflammation can disrupt endometrial receptivity, which is critical for the successful implantation of an embryo. This could result in failed implantation or recurrent miscarriages.
There are several ways to decrease the inflammation in your body and increase your fertility. Book a Fertility Consult for expert guidance on how acupuncture, herbal supplements, and certain foods are able to reduce your inflammation and prepare your body for pregnancy.
Step Six: Test if Necessary
If you’re over 35 and have actively been trying to get pregnant for more than 6 months (or if you’re over 40 and have been trying for more than a year), there are two Western tests that are highly recommended.
A sperm analysis to make sure there’s adequate good quality sperm
A Hysterosalpingogram to see if the fallopian tubes are open.
Fertility often gets talked about as a female issue since it’s the woman who gets pregnant, carries the baby, and gives birth—but the man plays an important role too since sperm makes up half your baby and creates the placenta.
In the last 40 years, sperm counts have dropped over 50% (and they continue to drop about 1-2% each year). Of all fertility cases, approximately 40-50% is due to male factor infertility, which is most frequently either one or a combination of: low sperm concentration, poor sperm motility, or abnormal morphology.
Having a sperm analysis done can help you catch big issues early on, which may possibly save you a ton of time and heartache down the road. And if the test results come back normal, that’s great! One less thing to worry about when you’ve got baby making on your mind.
And for the woman, getting a Hysterosalpingography done will be how you find out if your fallopian tubes are open, partly blocked, or fully blocked. If there’s a blockage, a typical Western doctor will say you have to do IVF or IUI, but this simply isn’t true.
The blockage in the fallopian tubes is often caused by inflammation (specifically pelvic inflammatory disease). When you get to the root cause of the inflammation and relieve it, you can actually open your fallopian tubes back up naturally and get pregnant without IVF or IUI. If you’ve been told that your fallopian tubes are blocked and that IVF is your only option, book a Fertility Consult because you still absolutely have a chance at getting pregnant naturally.
You’ll never regret taking the time to get healthy before becoming pregnant.
You might be able to force a pregnancy to happen with modern medicine and technological advancements, but those interventions can’t make up for the woman’s body not having everything she needs to get pregnant and carry a baby to term. When you’re not well, your body simply can’t support reproduction. And when you commit to actually healing your body instead of merely treating symptoms, both you and your baby will be healthier for the rest of your lives.
There are several things you should know before you get pregnant, and your future can look so much more hopeful than you’ve been led to believe. Book a Fertility Consult to get the one-on-one guidance and support to get pregnant and have the family you’ve been dreaming of.
