Your 1% Boost: The Pregnancy Doctor REVEALS 3 Ways To INCREASE Your Chances Of Pregnancy NATURALLY

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0:32What the fertile window is is going to be the five days before and then the day you ovulate. So an egg lives for 24 hours. The five days before you ovulate. Okay. So the five days before you ovulate and then the day that you ovulate. The egg lives for 24 hours. It has to be fertilized while it is in the fallopian tube in those first 24 hours. Spurm can live in the female reproductive tract for five days. That is why we will tell people to have sex before and then during ovulation. Put some of that sperm from the walker there a little bit earlier and then get some there right at the time when you're ovulating to see if you can fertilize that egg.

1:14If we think about understanding when your fertile window is based on your cycle link, so if we say your cycle is the entire process and then your period is just the bleeding days. The entire process, if your cycles are on average 28 days, the corpus leuidium lives 14 days. So 28 minus 14, you on average would ovulate on day 14. So the five days before and then day 14 are going to be your most fertile days to try to target in our course or avoid if you don't want to be pregnant. And if your cycles are 35 days, that was very different right because now 35 days minus 14 is going to be. 21. Yeah, go 21.

1:53So your fertile window or for that person is going to be cycle day 21. So now the five days before and day 21. So those are very different fertile windows days they should be having sex. It's a lot, isn't it? Do we just have sex every day if we can? So absolutely. Like if you can have sex every day or every other day and you don't have to track your cycles if they are coming regularly and you're putting sperm in the presence of the egg by every day or every other day sex. Absolutely. And that's one of the things that I see people do wrong the most is have less sex in the idea that they should save it up to put more sperm present when the egg is arriving.

2:32I have to say, I mean, there's a few things I wanted to say about this. So I think what's the first thing I wanted to say? The first thing I wanted to ask is how long on average do different age groups need to try before they hit the bull's eye? If you're age 30 and you're trying to get pregnant, you have a 20 % chance of pregnancy per month. Okay. This means that the majority of people should be pregnant within six months. Infertility is defined as trying for a year and not getting pregnant within that year. So kind of going off the curve of that standard deviation. Importantly, trying to get pregnant means that you're having intercourse, you're ejaculating inside and you're having regular periods.

3:15If you're not able to complete the active intercourse and you're not having regular periods, people should not wait X amount of time to come see a doctor. You should go be seen right away. When my friends tell me that they've started trying, I always think, God, that doesn't just ruin the fun. You know what I mean? Because I have this one friend who's telling me that because they're trying now, sex has become such a... Like chore. Like a chore. And if he's away when she's most fertile, then she gets annoyed at him. And I just think, God, it's so crazy what's happening with sex in that regard that it's...

3:51We're now... Because we're having kids later and later and we're leaving things a little bit later than ever before. We're now having to treat making kids almost like a chore. It's becoming like... I don't know. There's something about that, though. Oh gosh. Well, it's a good point. Because if you're waiting later and you still want to have more than one child, there's a lot of pressure on it. If you're starting at 35 and you have that 10 to 15 % chance per month, if you're starting at 38 and now it's 5 to 8 % per month, if you're 40, it's 3 to 5%. Isn't pressure like the opposite of sex? Right.

4:24It doesn't sound very fun. I think that one, having realistic goals is helpful because if you're trying to start your family at 37 and you want four kids, it is very unlikely to happen without intervention, like IVF, saving embryos for the future, which we can absolutely do. And we do that for people sometimes so that they can go have fun with their sex life again. Two, you feel like you have to track your cycles and time intercourse appropriately when you're older because there's so much that you can't do, right? You only have so many eggs. You only have so much time. And you're trying to do what you can.

4:59Understanding your cycle tracking for a woman is a reflection of her full health. How's your brain interpreting your entire body? So it is helpful because if you have irregularity, it is a sign that things are not working normally. That being said, regular sex is good for so many reasons and in a relationship that if you can establish sex more frequently as just part of your relationship, it becomes less burdensome that you're here recording a podcast at this time or somebody's out of town this one given month. And if we remember that sex, if we remember that sperm live in the female reproductive tract for up to five days, most of sperm is going to live there for two to three days.

5:39So five is kind of the longest it can. What we have is that, okay, have sex two or three times a week. What about couples that can't? Because I've sat here and interviewed so many sex therapists and sexologists if that's even a thing. And we often speak about sexlessness. People having sex less and less than ever before because they're so busy and they're so stressed in their lives and you must meet so many couples in your practice that you look at them and go, well, really the problem here is you're just not having sex with each other. 100%. And sometimes it's situational truck drivers, pilots, they're just a job where it is too hard to have that intercourse during the fertile window.

6:17But then also, yeah, high performing people or who just don't prioritize or don't enjoy that part of the relationship. We certainly do what we call IUI, your intra -utern insemination. And this is where you take the sperm and you're putting it inside the uterus. So instead of intercourse, we are taking it in a ejaculated sample and then processing it and putting it in the uterus. Wait, so I could just ejaculate in a petri dish, get a little pepette and pst. I mean, you can't do it yourself, but why? Well, because most of the ejaculate of your sperm is actually meant to protect the sperm from the acidity of the vagina.

6:56So most of that is not ever going to see the inside of a uterus. And if we put the whole sample up in the uterus, it would cause a huge inflammatory or infectious process. But if we clean that sample and we pellet out, centrifuge it and get just the sperm, we can then put the sperm into the uterus and avoid having all that protective ejaculate sample with it. If we talk about doing it the old fashioned way, yeah, you know, sex, there's a lot of misconceptions around how to increase our odds of getting pregnant. You hear about women putting their legs in the air after sex or things like people think if you go for a wee, then you're going to wee out all the sperm and that's not going to make you pregnant.

7:39Or any of these things true. There's so many myths when it comes to trying to get pregnant, the good old fashioned way within our course. So certainly we can go through a few of them. One of them we already touched on, which is, oh, you should save up sperm for when you're ovulating. So we see that sometimes men will ejaculate less or couples will actually not have sex trying to save up for that exact day of ovulation. But there's no need to do that. As we know, we want to clear the pipes to keep the sperm coming out healthy and alive and not have dead sperm and that you can have sperm survive in the reproductive tract for up to five days.

8:14So you want to be having an intercourse up until that ovulatory day. So every other day sex, every day sex, every three day sex, those are all fine. Nobody ever needs to have less sex. So if you and your partner have sex every day, please don't have less sex because you're trying to get pregnant. Number two, the sperm are inside the fallopian tubes within minutes. They have gone from the vagina, gotten through that seminal fluid in the ejaculate, through the cervix, through the uterus, and into the fallopian tube within minutes, under five minutes. So there's no need to prop your hips upon a pillow for 30 minutes or put your feet in the air.

8:53Truly the sperm are into the cervix within two minutes and the cervix is where they then sit for up to the five days. So the two minutes time that it's going to take you to withdrawal, get up, go to the bathroom, the sperm are fine. You're not going to pee out any sperm. You don't need to put any device in to keep sperm in place, keep your feet up, lay in bed. You can go and do whatever you want to do. And in fact, we know that you're an aiding after intercourse for women decreases the risk of a urinary tract infection. So we try to encourage people to get up and be normal. I also tell people all the time, embryos and plant eggs fertilized when you are up and living your life.

9:30So you don't need to just be horizontal to have fertilization occur. So what about sex positions? Are there any sex positions that are more conducive with the... Yeah, whatever position allows for ejaculation. So this is where variety is the spice of life because as you alluded to earlier, sex can fill a little bit more of a chore when you're trying to get pregnant or you're struggling. So making sure that ejaculation can happen, if there's not any position that is going to be better or worse, or going to have higher chance of a boy or a girl or any of that kind of knowledge. If the female orgasms does that increase the chance of fertility?

10:06We do know that orgasm does help, uterine contractions help get the sperm to the eggs faster. So we do know that. So we know that. How do we know that? Yeah. There have been studies looking at orgasm and then the speed of which sperm get to the phlobeantops. We'll just say that. We don't have overcruisable factors. It's like maybe it's just bigger and that's just good. No, so yeah, just that those contractions are helping kind of propel the sperm up there. What about penis size? So penis size really doesn't matter. What's interesting is that penis size does tend to correlate with different race and ethnicity also with vaginal length.

10:44So we tend to see different vaginal links in correlation with what tends to be a similar penis length based on that ethnicity or where that person originated from, which is super interesting. But you don't need to. You don't need a smaller penis or a bigger penis as long this sperm doesn't need to get closer to the cervix. I don't think people obviously think that. Yeah, no, no. When you would actually like, it goes. It gets right where it needs to go. OK. Crazy. It's super interesting. I've learned so much about all of this stuff today.

11:23The Diroverseos brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money when you bundle your home and auto policies. The process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit Progressive .com after this episode to see if you could save. Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary, not available in all states.