There isn't much more time to hide since I'll start to show soon plus I've been dying to share!
I’m PREGNANT! And I couldn’t be more excited for this new chapter!
I know pregnancy is a different journey for everyone and there is a lot that goes into it. I always try to share as much as I can to help others who might be looking for more information. So I’ll do my best to share as much as I can about my journey preparing for pregnancy, the journey of trying to conceive, and the fist trimester... To keep you from reading an overwhelming blog, I’ll break it up into different parts.
The journey is a wild ride and there are so many factors that can influence it and then some that are just totally out of your control. I’ll share my experience, what worked well for me, the approach I took, and my mindset around it.
Part 1
Prepping for Pregnancy
Joey and I knew that we wanted to have a family! And since as a holistic health coach, I wanted to do everything within my power to help support and prepare my body for this journey. I started by coming off hormonal birth control in June of 2022. After being on hormonal bc for 10+ years it was going to take some time to regulate and support my body to get back to normal. And I knew that takes time. I did think with the idea we were at least a year out from trying. To prepare my body, I was already taking a probiotic and prebiotic to support my gut health. Taking the hormonal birth control pill can directly impact your gut causing an imbalance in the gut. Taking a quality pre and probiotic, while also leaning into fiber-rich foods to help bolster and rebuild that makeup is key to supporting finding that regular balance. The two I recommend are Seed (which is both a pre & probiotic in one) and Just Thrive Probiotic.
I also made sure to boost my intake of vitamins and minerals since being on hormonal birth control for so long can deplete your body of nutrients. I leaned in even more to eating a primarily whole foods diet while I was researching and looking into prenatal vitamins to start taking.
Lastly, supporting my liver in detoxing my body was also something I was already underway of doing - minimizing the amount of alcohol I was drinking, and swapping out household and personal products for cleaner/less toxic products that won’t have as many toxins aka more work for my liver. The liver plays a role in detoxifying the body, filtering out excess hormones etc. So when on hormonal bc for so long, the liver is working in overdrive the entire time.
More on Prenatals
Vitamins and minerals are essential to not only your own health but also being able to conceive and grow a healthy baby. It is recommended to start taking prenatals about 4-6 months before trying to conceive to optimize your body to have plenty before you start growing a human (and an organ, hello placenta).
I started taking Needed’s essential prenatal vitamins, which consists of only 3 pills (verses the full amount being 8 pills) so that I could start off with just what is needed, and it was a little more cost-effective. We knew that sometime after our honeymoon (which was May of 2023) we would want to start trying so I started taking Needed in December of 2022. Not all vitamins are created equal so be sure you do your research before purchasing. Marketing can be super tricky. I used Needed for a couple of reasons:
Folate (not folic acid, since this isn’t absorbable by everyone)
B6 in the form of Pyridoxal-5-phosphate as that's the form that is bioavailable for the body
third party tested
Here is a podcast interview with the founders of Needed where they go in much more depth about what goes into their prenatals, what you need, and the forms of these vitamins!
Another great brand I have heard of is WeNatal, which is backed by Kelly Leveque, another health coach who I know and trust.
Tracking my cycle
When I came off hormonal birth control, I wasn’t ready to get pregnant right then so we still had to use some form of birth control. I started using Natural Cycles which uses your basil body temperature (BBT) to track when your body is ovulating. It's actually really freaking cool and I wish this was something I learned about when I was younger in how to track my period and better understand what was going on in my body.
I started this in June of 2022 when I came off hormonal bc so by the time we were ready to start trying, there was already plenty of data in the app on what was "normal" for my cycle. This paired with having had the last 10 months to learn what changes happened in my body at different phases, made tracking when I was ovulating pretty easy on my part.
Now this does not mean that coming off birth control you need to have a year plus before you can start trying. This was what I chose to do and there are plenty of people who come off birth control, get pregnant, and go on to have healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.
Let me know if this was helpful and if you have any questions! & Stay Tuned for Part 2!
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