The “Getting Pregnant - Can Herbs Help?” plus 4 more

Getting Pregnant - Can Herbs Help?
Trying to Get Pregnant - Tips You Can Use Tonight!
Get Pregnant Fast Naturally in 8 Weeks
How Close to Ovulation Do I Need to Be to Try to Conceive a Boy Baby?
Pregnancy and Diet - What Foods Should You Be Eating?

Posted: 04 Dec 2009 09:40 AM PST

Imagine being able to take something to boost your fertility - without having to resort to possibly dangerous drugs. Is that even possible? It is, because there are herbs that will enhance your fertility.

The benefit of fertility herbs is using them is more like using foods to boost your fertility than it is using drugs. Herbs nourish and support your body. They balance and strengthen your systems and organs, rather than aggressively stimulating one isolated aspect of your body as drugs do.

That said you should always use caution and moderation with herbs. Chinese Medicine generally recommends that herbs be taken for certain parts of your cycle. This approach is wise because it insures you don't overload your body. There are a couple of exceptions to this rule:

Red Raspberry - this is a time-honored woman's herb that strengthens and nourishes the uterus. It's considered a tonic herb, meaning the effects are strongest when it's used in small amounts over time. A cup or two of Red Raspberry Leaf tea or blend is good all the way through your pregnancy and postpartum time.

Red Clover - another tonic herb, red clover is a traditional fertility herb. It's high in minerals and very nourishing and balancing to the body. Take it as a tea in a blend with red raspberry.

Nettle - made from the stinging nettle plant, nettle tea is also very nourishing. It supports the liver and kidneys, helping them eliminate toxins. It's also a tonic and is best taken as a tea in a blend with red raspberry.

You can alternate a red raspberry/nettle blend with a red raspberry/red clover blend every other day. All these herbs are safe during pregnancy.

Here's some other herbs that may be helpful for limited times or at specific times in your cycle:

Chaste Tree Fruit (Vitex Agnus-Castus, Chasteberry) - This is considered an excellent herb to normalize women's cycles (even for women not trying to get pregnant). It helps regulate the period and for some women can increase sexual desire.

Falso Unicorn Root - This herb has been shown to increase hCG, an essential hormone in the fertility cycle, and increase circulation to the uterus. You need to take it in tincture form during the preconception portion of your cycle.

Dong Quai - This herb helps create a sperm-friendly environment and normalize the female cycle. You only use this during part of your cycle, and you should take it in a blend with other herbs (never alone).

There are some herbs useful for males, as well:

Astragals - this herb helps increase sperm movement and overall male health.

Pumpkin seeds - high in zinc and other beneficial substances.

It's always good to let your practitioner know when you're taking an herbal supplement, and if you can, find a good Naturopathic doctor or a Doctor of Chinese Medicine to consult while you're planning your supplements. Herbs help balance and nourish the whole body - one of these practitioners respects that and will help you address all issues you may have.

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Trying to Get Pregnant - Tips You Can Use Tonight!

Posted: 04 Dec 2009 09:35 AM PST

Boosting your fertility doesn't have to involve complicated procedures and expensive hormonal treatments when you are trying to get pregnant. Tips you can use such as avoiding certain habits or products that can aggravate your fertility problems can go a long way towards increasing your fertility potential. It's important to understand which factors can help bring you closer to your dreams of parenthood. Here are some simple pregnancy tips you can try tonight.

Stay away from cigarette smoke.

Sure, smoking might make you look more glamorous and desirable (or so says the tobacco ads), but it's not going to bring you one step closer to pregnancy. According to the British Medical Association, female smokers are 40% less likely to conceive than women who do not smoke. It's difficult to say exactly how this happens because here are literally hundreds of chemical compounds in cigarette smoke. However, researchers believe that some of these chemicals can trigger hormonal imbalances, which cause irregular menstrual cycles or anovulation. Not only that, but these harmful chemicals can also cause genetic abnormalities in mature eggs. In the likelihood that a female smoker does get pregnant, she's still at risk of an early miscarriage if the chemicals from the smoke stay in her body.

The bad news is that female non-smokers are not necessarily in the clear. It turns out that passive smoking, or inhaling secondhand smoke, also increases the likelihood of infertility or miscarriages. It doesn't matter who's lighting up the cigarette; as long as you're inhaling the harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke, your fertility is in danger. So if your partner is a smoker, ask him to step away from you whenever he needs his nicotine fix. Better yet, get him to start quitting altogether. Studies show that smoking can also contribute to male impotence by impairing sperm function and lowering sperm count.

Use foreplay to heat things up

A common problem experienced by couples trying to conceive is a lack of excitement in their sex lives. It's completely understandable - what with the stress of work, the pressure of a ticking biological clock, and the lack of spontaneity, sex just isn't as exciting as it used to be back when you were still dating. Instead of getting straight to the point of intercourse, spend a little more time doing foreplay. Believe it or not, foreplay can increase your fertility in two ways. The most obvious way is that t will help you feel more relaxed. By now you probably know how much stress can lower your chances of conceiving because stress hormones upset the balance of sex hormones.

Extended foreplay also encourages natural vaginal lubrication. Stress and fertility drugs tend to cause vaginal dryness, and most couples trying to conceive make the mistake of using commercial lubricants to solve this problem. Leading lubricant brands act as spermicide, even if they are water-based and contain no spermicidal chemicals, because their pH levels are too acidic. Sperm need an alkaline environment in order to survive. Although semen provides this sperm-friendly environment, the pH balance gets disrupted when a commercial lubricant is introduced. Lubricants also contain certain ingredients that affect sperm motility, or their ability to swim. Although a lubricant called Pre-Seed can provide the right environment for sperm to survive, it's probably best to lubricate the vagina naturally with a little foreplay.

Sex positions

When trying to get pregnant, it makes sense to use a position that makes the journey as short as possible for the sperm. The missionary position, or the man on top, is one of the best positions for conception because it provides deep penetration and deposits the sperm right outside the opening of the uterus. Another excellent position is doggie style, or rear entry, with the woman on all fours or lying down on her belly. This also brings the sperm right in front of the cervix and is especially useful for women with an inverted uterus. And yes, MRIs actually confirm that these two positions do place the sperm closest to the egg! Positions to avoid include woman on top, or any position where gravity can prevent sperm from reaching its destination in time.

Some experts also suggest lying on your back and "bicycling" for several minutes after intercourse to help the sperm swim along. There are no fancy imaging technologies to prove that this works but if anything, it should induce a couple of giggles. And what better way is there to make babies than to be silly and have fun?

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Get Pregnant Fast Naturally in 8 Weeks

Posted: 04 Dec 2009 09:33 AM PST

There has been many women and newly wed couples that have had unsuccessful attempts at raising a family due to in fertilization problems. Sometimes it could be the men's issues or it could be the woman's issues. Some of the men's problems could be from sperm blockage or even low sperm count. It could also be from a chronic disease, or a sexually transmitted disease (STD).

Some of the women's issues could be a low progesterone level, disorders in her ovulation cycle or even some disease like endometriosis. Doctors can prescribe drugs and medications to overcome a lot of these problems but there are other methods like the holistic treatment or view. This alternate medicine or healing practice has been show to be highly effective among many civilizations and cultures. One of the practices is called acupuncture.

Acupuncture is using precise needles inserted in much targeted locations throughout the body for therapeutic purposes. A healthy diet is also another important factor in fertility issues. Certain foods and drinks that contain caffeine like coffee, tea, chocolate and cocoa should be strictly avoided. Other foods such as fish that contain Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB) should also be taken off the menu for someone having fertility issues.

Another main enemy of in fertilization is alcohol. Heavy drinking can impair fertility in both men and women and therefore should be stopped when trying to conceive a baby. But the good news is there have been hundreds and hundreds of new families started by utilizing the holistic approach. If you would like to learn more about the holistic approach feel free to visit my site below.

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How Close to Ovulation Do I Need to Be to Try to Conceive a Boy Baby?

Posted: 04 Dec 2009 09:29 AM PST

I recently heard from a woman who was trying to conceive a boy baby. She had heard that you should try to conceive close to ovulation to accomplish this. But, she wanted to know how close you really needed to be. Her husband often traveled for business and sometimes, they were not able to commit to one particular day. She wanted to know how wide the window for this really was. The answer to this question would hopefully help her determine if she should wait to conceive when she knew she was trying on the right day. Yes, this might mean that she and her husband had to wait for a few months until he could definitely be home. But, this delay was worth it to her to make sure her time frame was correct. I will tell you what I told her in the following article.

How Wide Is The Window Of Conception To Get A Boy Baby?: This really does depend on the person and some other factors (which I'll go into more a little later.) But, if you could handpick the best day to conceive a boy, it would be the day of ovulation. The reason for this is pretty simple. The sperm that give you boys do not live for very long. Very shortly after they are released, they begin to weaken. So, the sands of time are ticking down and the window of opportunity is closing pretty quickly. That's not to say that you can't conceive a boy a few days before or after ovulation. It does certainly happen. It's just that your chances aren't as good under those circumstances and there are some pretty simple things that you can try to improve those same chances.

If you have the choice between being too early and being too late, it's better to be too late. Why? Because if you are too early, you are making the chances better that the longer lived girl sperm will have success. But, if you wait until too late, the chances are better that neither gender will survive for this long, and so you just won't become pregnant for that month, and can try again the next time (and hopefully improve your timing.)

Before I move on to the other variables that may affect this, I want to just briefly mention that it's highly important that you actually know when you have ovulated. Many people assume that they know and so they don't even make any attempts to actually test and confirm this. They'll just assume that if they are regularly menstruating, that they are also regularly ovulating somewhere in the middle. This is such a risky practice in terms of gender selection. Because if you are even wrong by just day or so, the whole outcome can also be off. See, you may have been doing exactly the right thing, but on the exactly wrong day. It's absolutely worth it to get an ovulation predictor that will tell you exactly when your optimal day is. This might turn out to be what you thought, but it's not worth the risk of it not turning out that way, at least in my opinion.

How Being Alkaline Can Give You A Little Bit More Of Leeway With Your Conception Window When Trying To Conceive A Boy: The woman who wrote to me had no idea if she was acidic or alkaline. This can make a slight difference in your timing. The reason for this is that being alkaline already increases your odds for getting a male baby because this environment is neutral (rather than being detrimental, as an acidic environment is,) for these little guys. So, since the environment is friendly, you're going to get the full life span of the sperm that produce boys (which is relatively short to begin with.) If you are acidic though, this short life span becomes even shorter. These already challenged little guys now have more to over come and this of course makes their job even more difficult.

That's not to say that you can ignore timing if you are alkaline. It makes absolute sense to make every variable as close to optimal as you can. But, being alkaline does mean a longer life span, so it's definitely worth it to get here if you can. Also, sexual intercourse that allows deep deposits can help also. This helps that short window also by giving these guys a head start.

Looking At This Specific Case: So, what is the bottom line for the woman who wrote to me? Well, she really wanted to give herself her best chance to get a son and she was pretty serious about this. So, she did not mind waiting if she needed to. I really felt that her best bet was to wait until she got the go ahead from the ovulation predictor of her choice. If her husband was traveling when this happened, then she could try when he returned Or she could travel to him.) The worst case scenario would have been that both male and female sperm had died off if they waited. But, the boy sperm would have the best chance this way. I did not want her to try before he left. I felt that the best idea was to try later rather than earlier.

I also felt that she should consider trying to become more alkaline as soon as she could. Depending on where she already was, this process can take some time. Whether she used food or douching, it made sense to give herself the time to make sure that this part of the puzzle was already taken care of when the time was right.

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Pregnancy and Diet - What Foods Should You Be Eating?

Posted: 04 Dec 2009 09:17 AM PST

Eating well while you are pregnant is not always easy but it goes without saying that a healthy pregnancy and diet go hand in hand. The first few weeks of your pregnancy are usually the hardest when it comes to maintaining a healthy diet, with cravings and morning sickness the main limiting factors. Fortunately, the first trimester is not as important as the second and third. During the first trimester there is no need to consume any extra calories, however you do need to ensure you maintain a nutritionally balanced diet through this phase.

So, what should you be eating during your pregnancy? As mentioned, the most important thing is nutritional balance and it will also be an advantage if you take the time to learn what different foods will do for the development for you and your baby. While this ratio is by no means definitive, most experts recommend eating meals made up of 40-45% carbohydrates, 25-30% protein and 30-35% of fats each day. The following tips will give you an idea of what you should be eating to ensure a healthy pregnancy and diet:

Avoid eating refined carbs (white bread, white pasta, white rice etc, chips etc.) as these foods contain a high number of calories, but very little in the way of fiber. Instead, try to eat wholemeal foods. The slow releasing carbs in wholemeal foods will keep you feeling fuller for longer and give you the energy you and your baby need throughout the day. Another great source of healthy carbs and fiber is fruits and vegetables - the more varied, the better!
It is a common myth that all fats are bad in a healthy pregnancy and diet, but this could not be further from the truth. While you should always avoid saturated fats, unsaturated fats (healthy fats), in fact, help to keep the bad fat off. These healthy fats can be found in foods like olive oil and fish (however, ensure you avoid shellfish as these are often found to be the cause of allergies and infections).
Protein is hugely important in any pregnancy and diet and can be found in a wide range of tasty, nutritional foods. Lean meats like chicken, turkey and pork provide a great source of protein, while red meat also provides iron, an essential building block to an unborn baby's blood cells. Fish also serves as a great source of protein, as well as providing very healthy omega-3 fats.

Finally, ensure you are getting all the vitamins you need. A balanced diet should provide these vitamins, but you may want to consider taking a multi-vitamin pill. Avoid drinking alcohol altogether and make sure you are drinking at least 1.5 litres of water per day. By following these tips you and your baby should enjoy a fit and healthy pregnancy.

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