hi everyone and welcome back this is episode 2 of the doctors bjorkman have a
baby well it's actually the doctors bjorkman
try to have a baby at this point but this is likely to be our funnest
episode yet as we're going to be talking a lot about things
you could do and that we're actually doing to try to get pregnant
so mom and dad if you're watching this may be the point where you want to tune
out because we're going to be talking a lot about
sex and a list of evidence-based practices to optimize your natural
fertility and things that all couples could be
doing to get pregnant fast so if this is the first time you're
meeting us i'm sarah and i'm an ob gyn and i'm kurt and i'm a pediatrician and
we are the doctors
yorkman
so in case you missed it last week we talked all about who we are and what
we're doing uh but if you want we've got that video
linked below for you to check out and you can always follow us on
instagram at thedoctorsbjorkman for more insight into our day-to-day life
basically we're two doctors we've waited a long time to start a family and we
thought it would be fun to document the journey from beginning to end all 40
weeks of pregnancy which makes this week week two where
we're going to be talking a lot about getting pregnant so interestingly your
chances of getting pregnant in a month are only 20 to 25
yeah but fortunately that means for most healthy couples after six months
80 of them will be pregnant and that number rises to 85
at 12 months but keep in mind infertility is a disease
defined as not being able to get pregnant after 12 months
of unprotected intercourse or exposure to sperm so if it's been that long for
you it's time for you to go see your ob gyn or your rei
reasons you should head in sooner are if you are over 35 or
if you have some gyn history that puts you at a higher risk of infertility
like irregular periods or a history of some gyn surgery
but if you're like us and you don't have any of those issues that you know about
you may be wondering how can we get pregnant as fast as possible
which is why we came up with this fun mnemonic about optimizing your natural
fertility fast for that the f is
optimizing fitness the a is avoid things that can decrease your fertility
s is for sex his favorite and then t is for
timing we're going to talk all about your fertile window
so again the f in the fast mnemonic stands for optimizing overall fitness
last week we talked a little bit about things that we thought about as a couple
before making this decision to start a family of our own
wanting to be in good health both to get pregnant as a couple and to be parents
hopefully in the near future as well essentially you don't want to wait too
much and you don't want to wait too little
studies have shown that obese women with a bmi over 35 can take up to twice as
long to get pregnant on average and women who
are really thin or underweight with the bmi less than 19
can take up to four times as long to get pregnant so if you're not in a hurry to
get pregnant this is a great time to work to optimize
your overall body weight great time to get back in the gym
schedule regular exercise and even clean up your diet
that being said there's no specific dietary variation
vegetarianism veganism antioxidant diet or some herbal remedy that has been
shown to improve fertility fertility or affect babies gender however the
fertility diet which is notably rich in poultry seafood
whole grains fruits and vegetables and also low in things like red meats
low in sugar and low in other processed foods is related to
better fertility in women and better semen quality in men
this is also a time to talk about prenatal vitamins if you are thinking
about having a baby now is the time to start taking a
prenatal vitamin with at least 400 micrograms of folic acid or vitamin b9
as a pediatrician this is super important to me i've cared
for multiple children with neural tube defects
and taking folate as mom before you get pregnant is one thing you can do to
decrease your baby's chance of having this happen yeah and the final
thing to think about here is that women's
fertility starts to decline around age 35 it doesn't really catch up for men
until age 50 but if you aren't quite ready to start a
family just keep this in mind when you're thinking about your goals and
your plans for the future so during this 40 week series we're
going to be jumping in with little sections we're going to call irl
or in real life because yes we are doctors but we're also real people
and we want you to know what the things we're talking about look like in real
life i get asked all the time what kind of
prenatal vitamin is the best and my only recommendation is that it
has at least 400 micrograms of folic acid i'm not brand loyal in any way and
didn't even have a go-to prenatal when i went to look for myself
so i picked up the first thing i found on the shelf it's got 400 micrograms of
folic acid and some dha and it also smells like
fish and made me nauseous so i had to look for something else
i have landed on these ritual essential prenatal vitamins
they smell like lemon they're a little more expensive than i wanted to pay
but i am not nauseous at all i am not sponsored i am paying for these with my
own money and i really like them so far had those not worked for me i probably
would have gone to a gummy prenatal vitamin
um but those do not have any iron in them um
and so i'm just happy these are working for now
so the a is to avoid things that can decrease your fertility
the short list of things we're going to cover here are smoking alcohol
caffeine and other toxins there are a thousand reasons to quit smoking
but we know that women who smoke are more likely to experience infertility
and are more likely to have a miscarriage and men who smoke
have been found to have decreased sperm number and their sperm have decreased
motility as well what about alcohol yeah so alcohol is
really important for us to mention here because there is no
safe amount of alcohol in pregnancy for the developing baby
as alcohol is known to be detrimental to the developing fetus's brain
that being said when you are trying to conceive
having one drink every once in a while is probably totally fine
studies have shown women who have two or more drinks per day
are more likely to experience infertility but if you have
one or less it's probably totally fine you just have to stop
once you are pregnant which brings us to my advice caffeine
so women who consume more than 500 milligrams of caffeine or the equivalent
of five cups of coffee a day have increased rates of
infertility and women who are pregnant who consume 200
to 300 milligrams of caffeine or two to three cups a day
of coffee or more have increased rates of miscarriage correct
however studies have shown if you have two cups or less or about 200 milligrams
or less of caffeine when you are pregnant or trying to conceive there are
no adverse effects on your fertility or pregnancy outcomes so those two cups
of coffee a day are okay you don't have to quit awesome
one more thing to think about marijuana is a substance that's difficult to study
however it has been known to cause harmful
effects to the fetus and can decrease fertility so that is another one that
you probably want to cut out when you are trying to conceive and
pregnant yeah and finally list of other substances that you should try to avoid
if at all possible things like dry cleaning solvents
heavy metals and pesticides have all been shown to have decreased rates of
fertility in both men and women and now time for everyone's
favorite letter in this demonic s for sex we are going to talk about some
of the questions i get pretty frequently as an ob gyn
and debunk some of the myths we're going to talk about positions orgasm frequency
and loops that are safe and not safe to use so first of all there's no special
position to help increase your chance of getting pregnant
correct you do not need to lie on your back you don't need to
hold your legs in the air for hours after sex the sperm
gets the fallopian tube in minutes to meet that egg
so whatever position works well for you have at it yes but having said that
female orgasm also has no relationship to
pregnancy however i would highly recommend it
the other really important thing to talk about is just how often a man should
ejaculate to help improve his sperm quality so we know
that abstinence of five days or greater can decrease from
count and more than 10 days between ejaculation can decrease overall sperm
quality but daily ejaculation has not been shown
to decrease sperm quality or concentration it's fine and
actually for men who may have low sperm count they
may see the highest sperm concentrations with daily ejaculation finally we should
talk about lubricants yeah so lube is one of those things where if
you're trying to get pregnant you may be making things harder on yourself without
even knowing about it there are certain lubricants that can
decrease sperm motility notably things like ky astro glide even
olive oil and saliva can decrease the sperm's ability to get where it needs to
go yes so lubricant that is okay
is going to be mineral oil canola oil and something
that is a hydroxy hydroxyethyl cellulose product so these are things like
pre-seed or even conceive eaves are brand name products on the market
that do not inhibit sperm motility and can give you the lubrication you
need if you need it yes so again well products like this
are really popular they can impair sperm motility which is why we switch to
pre-seed which contains hydroxyethyl cellulose we
have not yet rated the pantry for other fertility friendly things like
mineral oil or canola oil and just to make things easier on
you guys any products we've talked about today will be linked in the description
below so we are to our last letter of the fast
mnemonic we are at the t and that is all about
timing we are going to talk about the times when it is best to have sex
to get pregnant fast what we're talking about here is a period of time
every month called the fertile window which is the six day period ending on
the day of ovulation and actually your highest chances to get
pregnant are when you have sex on those one to two days before ovulation or the
day of ovulation yeah the goal here is to have sperm there ready
waiting to meet the egg when ovulation happens because the egg can only live
for 12 to 24 hours after it's released whereas sperm just
doesn't die and can stay in the female reproductive
tract for up to five days so we say all this not to create stress
but rather to make things more easy for you to help
optimize your chances of getting pregnant because predicting
ovulation can actually be kind of difficult and there are different things
you can use to try to help there are period tracker apps for your
phone there are ovulation predictor kits there's basal body temperature
monitoring cervical mucus monitoring different things that give you a general
idea so tracking ovulation can be difficult because it can vary
from day to day from cycle to cycle there are different
things you can do one of them is a period tracker app i've been using
the clue app again not sponsored i just like it it's
easy you track your cycles for a while and then
it tells you what your fertile window is based on your history
you can also use ovulation predictor kits i have been tracking my cycles for
a couple months and so i've tried out a variety
there are the sticks there are these little inserts that actually are nice
they hook into this digital monitor that gives you a digital readout i broke
my digital monitor so i don't have that anymore
and then there are these strips they come in like a
150 pack that they all turn you get two lines when your lh
is rising which means you're going to ovulate in the next 24 to 48 hours
there's been a lot of sending curt texts of like is this
one line or two is it faint today is that a faint blue line
um but for the most part it seems to be working
in terms of detecting my lh surge for ovulation
and timing of sex the easiest way to improve your chances though is to just
have more sex we know that
pregnancy rates are highest if you have sex every day but
having sex every other day confers about the same pregnancy rate
and this is the one thing we've promised you that all couples can be doing to get
pregnant faster that is having regular sexual
intercourse penis and vagina sex every one to two days after the end of
the female partner's period for two weeks it's that easy that easy
have more sex at the right time have a baby
so honestly i've never felt more pressure to perform before in my life
uh this week which is a feeling i never thought i'd feel but it feels like
high-stakes sex yeah and so we're trying we're having a
lot of sex and we're having a lot of fun and
i haven't been turned down one night this week
all right everybody that is a wrap on this week's episode just to recap our
mnemonic to get pregnant fast with f standing for optimizing your
overall fitness a is avoiding things that can decrease
your fertility s have sex and three is timing so hopefully
this is helpful for you guys i know these are the things
that we're doing is we're trying to start a family of our own
subscribe leave a comment follow along let us know if you have any questions
yeah we'll be back here next week talking about
the two-week wait and what's happening in the time between
uh having sex and actually finding out we're pregnant
thanks for joining us we are the doctors bjorkman
we're doctors but not your doctors anything we've said in this video is for
education or entertainment purposes only it is not
medical advice any specific medical questions you have should be directed to
your provider