Pre-conception is such an exciting time.
You’re anticipating a pregnancy, and a new life. You want to be as healthy as possible, so that your little one can be as healthy as possible. Plus, preparing ahead of time can minimize morning sickness (really!) or at least make sure your nutrient stores are solid in case you do experience morning sickness and can’t eat much.
If you’re planning to get pregnant in the next six months, then these are definitely things you need to consider. Even if you’re planning to get pregnant in the next year. Are you curious what to do?
7 Steps to Prepare for Conception
1. Cleanse Your Gut
Many of us have some gut damage from something or another. Birth control pills, antibiotics, conventional meats, illnesses…. These all wreak havoc on our gut flora. Gut flora matters a lot, because it will affect if you experience morning sickness and how badly, how your body extracts and transfers nutrients to your growing baby, and colonizing your baby’s gut at birth.
If you know or suspect that you have unhealthy gut flora — you deal with frequent constipation or diarrhea, you have eczema, you have food allergies, etc. — then it’s time to deal with it now. Severe symptoms or any long-term unaddressed damage needs this first step.
Do a juice fast for a few days (unless you’re nursing another baby) with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetable juices, or consider a diet like the GAPS diet for awhile. Add in capsules of goldenseal root and/or colloidal silver for about a week to jump start your cleanse and kill off bad bacteria — these are natural antibiotics.
If you’re already pregnant, or planning to get pregnant in less than 3 months, don’t do this. Skip to the next step.
2. Start Probiotics
Not taking probiotics yet? You should be. Probiotics will improve your gut flora, help you absorb more nutrients from your food, and likely reduce morning sickness once you get pregnant. Choose a quality product without allergens or fillers. We like this one.
3. Take a B-vitamin Supplement
This is pretty crucial. B-vitamin deficiency is related to neural tube and midline defects in babies, including cleft lip and palate, tongue ties, and spina bifida. This isn’t something you want to mess around with. If you have a MTHRF gene mutation, you’re even more at risk because your body doesn’t absorb most B vitamins properly.
We recommend these vitamins, which are actually designed for people with a MTHFR mutation. Start taking them several months before pregnancy to build up your levels. B vitamins a water-soluble and excess will be flushed out, so you will need to take them daily. Midline deficiencies are formed in the first 6 – 8 weeks of pregnancy, so it’s important to take this well before you get pregnant.
4. Start Vitamin D
Vitamin D is also important for a healthy pregnancy. It’s a pre-hormone, actually, not a vitamin. It helps your body to maintain healthy magnesium and calcium levels, and helps to maintain your immune system. We like these simple drops.
5. Add Super Foods to Your Diet
What you eat in pregnancy is very important. Your baby is very tiny, and needs few calories (at first), but needs large amounts of vitamins and minerals to build his/her entire body. That’s why you should be eating foods like:
- Eggs
- Whole (raw) milk
- Greens
- Fresh fruit
- Whole grains
- Liver (from grass-fed cows)
- Bone broth
- Avocados
- Butter (from grass-fed cows)
The foods should be very nutrient-dense. Eat as much as you can while you’re not pregnant to build up your stores. It may be hard to stomach some of these foods in the early months (although you should if you can), so build up those important fat-soluble nutrients in your body!
6. Exercise Lightly
Exercise is actually much more important than we realize. Yes, it helps get your blood moving and your heart pumping and your muscles working. But the reason that matters is because it impacts your lymphatic system. Your lymphatic system is a series of channels and ducts throughout your body, independent of your blood, that move wastes from your cells and help detox your body naturally. When you don’t move enough, your lymph stagnates, and junk stays in your system instead of getting out.
Start a habit of daily 10-minute walks now. Run if you’re into that. Use an elliptical machine at the gym, or any other low-impact exercise. Aim to keep up this routine throughout pregnancy. Don’t worry about any hard training or high-intensity exercise right now — your goal isn’t to get in shape, it’s to keep yourself healthy for pregnancy.
7. Reduce Your Stress
Stress levels hugely impact your overall health. When we’re stressed out, our cortisol levels are high. Cortisol opposes progesterone, which is needed to achieve and maintain pregnancy! Plus, high stress exhausts your adrenals, saps your energy, and is all-around not good for your health — or your future baby.
Essential oils like jasmine, rose, neroli, orange, lemon, and lavender (the latter three being much more affordable than the former three) are excellent to diffuse to help improve mood. Eat enough — no skipping meals!! Get some quality, unrefined sea salt in your diet. Take time away to relax and rejuvenate, however you do that. You’ll feel better, and you’ll be better prepared for pregnancy!
The Resource Guide You Need!
We’re about to head into a new year here — and a lot of you are vowing to become healthier. (Whether that’s to prepare for conception or for totally different reasons.) That’s why you need an amazing set of resources to get you on right track, and keep you inspired all year long.
This collection is called the Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle. It’s exactly what you need to make some real changes!
First, there are ebooks.
You’ll find Cleansing for Conception, which will help you more on this topic! Plus, Morning Sickness Remedies, once you are pregnant. You’ll even get Simple Guide to Ferility, by a health professional, which will help you increase your chances of conceiving and protect your health.
Of course those are only three of the many, many books in this collection. There’s also The Truth About Essential Oil Safety, Never Gymless (how to work out without a gym or fancy equipment), Detox Your Home Handbook, Living Green n an Artificial World, and lots more.
Then, there are the ecourses.
There’s Great Pregnancy, to help you have the healthiest possible pregnancy and best birth. There’s also Five Foundational Routines, simple exercises for women before and after pregnancy, which are safe for mamas with diastasis recti. There are several more beyond that!
And finally, the free bonuses.
These just make the deal. They are *free* physical products to improve your health.
- *Kombucha Extract — a high quality source of probiotics. ($40 value)
- *Perfect Supplements — high quality supplements, a $15 gift code ($15 value)
- *Trilight Health — awesome herbal tinctures, including a multivitamin version we like during pregnancy, 2 oz. FREE or $15 gift code ($15 value)
…plus even more.
You could purchase most of your pre-conception supplements here, for free. The value is $70 of just these supplements. The bundle sells for $29.97. Do the math — you win, big! (And that’s without the ecourses and ebooks, which you also get.)
But, don’t hesitate. This sale is only on for 48 hours. It ends tomorrow night! You need to grab it now. And if you don’t love it for some reason, there is a full 30-day money-back guarantee. (Seriously, you have nothing to lose.)
We’ll even send you a set of bonus printables — the top 10 things you need to know to have a healthy pregnancy, a prenatal supplement routine, and a chart of the best foods to eat for a healthy pregnancy. This bonus is available ONLY through us! Just forward your receipt to editor@modernalternativemama.com with “MAP bonus” and we’ll get that over to you!
How do you prepare for conception?
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