Let’s talk about S-E-X. When my husband and I first started trying to conceive we didn’t give too much thought to timing and planning and the intricacies of human reproduction. When our “efforts” were not successful I began to really study my cycle and learn about peak days of fertility. At this point my husband was still excited about our venture, still thinking that this babymaking business worked out really well for him! Eventually, though, like a lot of couples, on-demand sex became very tiresome and our efforts dwindled to pretty much only when it was conceivable that a baby could result. Everyone I knew who was struggling with infertility were doing the same thing – tracking ovulation either through prediction kits or BBT and making sure they got busy on the “right” days.
That is why I was shocked to hear from my RE that he firmly believes that timed and scheduled sex is detrimental to efforts to conceive. He suggested that relations 3 to 4 times a week, every week, was more likely to result in a baby. His reasoning for this was varied but primarily he thought that closely tracking cycles and having sex only when you are most fertile increases stress, decreases joy and spontaneity, and makes the whole process too much like work. He admitted that we had issues that would make it difficult to conceive naturally regardless, but advised that we have regular and frequent sex throughout the month (because you never know what can happen with that pesky ovulation period) and stop making it so regimented.
Of course, being the “Google MD” that I am I had to research this idea and surprisingly found a lot of info that agreed with his approach. I also found other theories that contradicted his opinion but for the most part I realized that his advice was more mainstream than I previously thought. I will admit that by the time he told us this, we were pretty much over our efforts to conceive naturally and were ready to move on to more proactive methods, but I did stop buying the ever-present ovulation prediction kits and the month we did conceive on clomid (miscarriage ultimately) was the one that we just decided to “try” every other day for the entire month with no regard to peak fertility days. If you are like me and think that you aren’t really giving it your all if you aren’t tracking and taking control of your efforts, you may just want to try taking a break from it all recognizing that we don’t really have any control over the process and something “off-the-wall” like having sex just for fun again might just work.
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