
What a BFF (Best Fertility Friend) Would Say – Ch. 12
Nov 9, 2020
These blog posts titled “What a BFF (Best Fertility Friend) Would Say” are a collection of random tips to give you strength and assurance as you try to get pregnant. I hope they help!
With appreciation for inviting me on your journey,
Julie
Table of Contents
Waiting for this to happen will prevent you from getting pregnant
If you’re in your late 30s and 40s trying to get pregnant, improving and maintaining egg quality must be top on your priority list, regardless of any other health conditions you may have like cysts, fibroids, endometriosis or personal issues.
While you resolve the other areas that need your immediate attention, continue or start therapeutic strategies that will enhance egg quality like exercise, supplements, acupuncture, or other adjunctive therapies such as my online fertility program. Of course, if your doctor advises you to wait, please do so.
Unfortunately, your egg quality will continue to diminish if you don’t actively slow down their declining function. They will not wait for you while you resolve other issues in your life. You must address them at the same time or you will lose valuable time.
Make sure you’re clear about this before doing anything else
The writer Anais Nin on how to unlock a bigger, fuller life: “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” (hat tip to author James Clear for this quote)
It’s often said that courage is not the absence of fear but rather action in spite of it.
To gain more courage on your fertility journey, you must be clear on WHAT you want and WHY you want it. Notice, I didn’t say how or when!
The “why” must come from within yourself and not from external pressures of societal, parental, or in-law expectations.
I find many women are surprisingly ambivalent about their desire to have a child, even as they spend thousands of dollars on fertility treatments.
That uncertainty most assuredly contributes to not getting pregnant. A baby wants to be welcomed into a family. It has chosen you and in return you have to choose it with rock-steady certainty.
The decision to commit one way or the other requires courage to reflect on what you really want and are ready for. Take this critical first step before doing anything else.
How to know if and when you’re ovulating
Most women assume that they’re ovulating if they have a regular period and for the most part, that’s a correct assumption.
However, it IS possible to have bleeding without ovulating. This bleeding is a result of the uterine lining building up to the point where it can’t sustain itself and has to be released. The bleeding can also be due to a drop in estrogen.
Having said that, it’s rare for me to have a client who has a period but isn’t ovulating. What I find more problematic is that a lot of women don’t know WHEN they ovulate so might be timing intercourse incorrectly.
This is because many believe ovulation is on Day 14 which is a myth. It’s completely false. It depends on the individual.
Most women ovulate anywhere between Day 10 – Day 21 of their cycle which is a big range. Day 1 is considered the first full day of flow so if you get spotting beforehand, that doesn’t count.
I recommend that you chart your basal body temperature every morning for 1 month to gain insight into what a typical cycle is like for you.
Here’s what to do…When you wake up, the first thing you do is take your temperature. That’s before you go to the bathroom, drink a glass of water, or do anything else because the longer you delay, the warmer your body will get and the reading won’t be accurate. You enter the temperature into a fertility tracker app. Make sure to use one that charts your temperatures as a line graph.
After you take a full month’s worth of temperature, look back at your chart and calculate the average temperature before ovulation. Then calculate the average temperature after ovulation. If you ovulated, you will an increase in temperature of at least half a degree Fahrenheit after ovulation.
When you see that shift in temperature, it means you have ovulated some time in the 12-24 hours before that change. Now you’ll have confirmed that you did indeed ovulate and have a better idea of when you ovulated. The OPKs don’t confirm ovulation so if you see a surge on your stick, it doesn’t necessarily mean that ovulation actually was completed so that’s why I recommend charting your temperature for at least one month.
Food porn for fertility
Many traditional cultures and medicines including Chinese culture and Chinese herbal medicine use a strategy called Doctrine of Signatures.
It’s the concept that Mother Nature gifts us with foods that nourish, aid and support the body part they resemble.
Some examples are walnuts for the brain, carrots for the eyes (look at a carrot slice and see how it looks like the iris and pupil), kidney beans for the kidneys, tomatoes for the heart (slice a tomato in half and you’ll notice how the chambers in the tomato look like those in a heart),
But you’re here to improve your fertility. So here are the fertility foods according to the Doctrine of Signatures.
- Avocado for uterus (and evidently, it takes 9 months for an avocado to grow from a blossom to a ripe fruit)
- Figs for scrotum and the sperm inside (did you know that figs hang in twos when they grow, like a pair of testicles)
- Oysters for vagina
- Red chili pepper for penis
- Clams for testicles.
How about the ovaries? Olives. But I think what’s even better are Pomegranates. They’re fertility symbols in many cultures. Ruby red with juicy seeds. They resemble ovaries bursting with healthy eggs!
Pomegranates are in season now. Pick up a few this week and enjoy them to eat or decorate with them. Buy a whole pomegranate.
When you have undisturbed time, sit down and eat the seeds. While you’re savoring each seed, imagine how each of your own seeds (your eggs) are ripe, bursting with vitality, ready to be picked up not by your fingertips but by your fallopian tubes. Visualize it so you send the message from your eyes and taste buds to your brain which will then tell your body to mimic the situation with your own ovaries.
These foods in and of themselves are excellent fertility boosters especially the seafood like oysters and clams.
However, what is much more helpful is now that you have these associations, when eating these foods, eat mindfully.
Most of you eat avocados regularly. If not, you should be. When you’re eating one, think and visualize how you wait for an avocado to be at its optimal ripeness before you eat it and how in the same way, your uterus is preparing for the perfect time to receive an embryo – that it’s all about timing and you trust your body to know when that time is right.
Being intentional with your thoughts is a fertility method that you probably won’t hear from your doctor. It’s extraordinarily powerful in creating the future you want and not the one that gets handed to you based on your current behavior patterns.