Ep 162: Quick Listen: Navigating the Preconception Timeline

In this quick listen episode, Tiffany provides a detailed overview of the essential timeline and steps to follow before conception. The episode covers important topics such as cycle charting, the impact of hormonal contraceptives, personal health goals, methylated folate intake, and the significance of choosing the right pregnancy care provider. Tiffany also provides resources and previous episodes for further information on holistic fertility and preconception testing.

00:00 Key Steps Before Getting Pregnant

01:17 Charting Your Cycle

02:35 Coming Off Hormonal Contraceptives

04:24 Personal Health Goals

06:21 Methylated Folate Vitamin

10:01 Choosing a Pregnancy Care Provider

Links to all the extra good stuff:

Episode 140 on Holistic Fertility and Getting Pregnant Naturally: HERE
Episode 157 on Preconception Testing: HERE
Prep for Pregnancy Checklist: HERE
Rupa Health MTHFR Testing: HERE
Childbirth Education Wait List: HERE
Join our email community: HERE
Submit your answer-on-the-show questions: HERE

Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to catch every episode. Follow us on Instagram for extra education and antics between episodes at: @beautifulonemidwifery

Transcript

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Welcome to At Home with Kelly and Tiffany, where naturally minded women gather together as we pursue simplicity and confidence in health alternatives, so we can show up better in our busy lives and feel more at home in our bodies. Join your favorite home birth midwife duo for conversation, candor, and community. Welcome to at home with Tiffany and Kelly. Liz is just Tiffany today doing a quick lesson about the timeline for preconception. As we get started, I want to answer a frequently asked question. What do I mean to do before I get pregnant, we get asked that all the time and we have a lot of suggestions for it, but we have covered preconception. And a few other episodes as well. So you can jump to those. After you finish here and I will direct you to those right now, we have episode 140. Which is holistic fertility and getting pregnant naturally. And we have episode 157. Which covers preconception testing. And those along with the information that we share here today are going to equip you. For some excellent tools for preconception. Right away on your preconception timeline. You want to start charting your cycle. It is a vital sign and all women should be doing it hands down. I truly believe that, but we. I want to especially pay attention to ovulation. And you want to know as you're preparing for consumption and preparing for pregnancy, if you are getting peak oscillation in every single cycle. And if you're not, that's something to investigate. You don't want to be investigating some of these things while you're trying to get pregnant. This is something that you can do ahead of time to check how normal your cycles are and how healthy your hormones are. Tend to 18% of normal cycles are an ovulatory. So that means that roughly maybe almost for one fifth of normal cycles. So they appear completely normal. The woman does not, obviously it's so it can be fairly common to have normal cycles where there is not obviously. And since you can not get pregnant without ovulation, this is a great time to make sure that you aren't dealing with a bigger hormonal issue. It is an often overlooked or even misunderstood part of optimal fertility. Next on the timeline we are we're working forwards. We're starting backwards working forwards. And this point in the timeline is around nine months or longer should be spent coming off of hormonal contraceptives. Nine months is basically the average time it takes to regulate. Your hormones after being on birth control, it could be one month for some, it could be years for another, but you want to give yourself at least a nine month buffer to let your body acclimate. That would be a wise way to work the timeline before conceiving. And hormonal contraceptives essentially work by suppressing so the whole time that you are on them, you are not actually having a monthly hormonal cycle. You're going to bleed each month. If you have a period, though, it's from estrogen was drawl. It's not from a normal buildup of the uterine lining after ovulation, because you will not offer you late on hormonal birth control. So you've basically been suppressing all of your reproductive hormones. And it can take time for them to get back to functioning again. That's why we recommend about a nine month period for that. Also women who are coming off of hormonal birth control will also do well to focus on a few specific things that hormonal birth control kind of wreak havoc on. And that's a gut health and mineral support as these are often the side effects of being on hormonal contraceptives. And if you were dealing with hormonal issues before you went on hormonal contraceptives, you can expect that to somewhat pick up right back where you left off, and that sometimes can take a deeper work and fine tuning. Tuning to so all this to say, do not let this piece take you by surprise. Give yourself plenty of time to irregulate and establish a fertile baseline. Okay, moving on our timeline here. We're at six months. Six months or more should be spent working on your own personal health goals. Like your gut health, whether you have parasite activity or heavy metal, or there's some specific detoxing or cleansing that you want to do, you want to do that far ahead of potential pregnancy? You also want to work on blood sugar stability. That is such an important way to prepare your body for a healthy, low risk pregnancy. And metabolic health is an important marker for all women, but understanding how well your organs are functioning with some blood tests. Knowing what your blood pressure ranges are understanding your your body's cholesterol levels and your fasting. Insulin numbers and stuff like that are all included in metabolic health. And you want to make sure that you are at the foundational level, offering your baby a really healthy body to grow in. It's going to keep your pregnancy low risk. It's going to keep you healthy. It's going to keep. Your baby low risk and just give you an easier time overall. And I can't tell you how many times I have been sitting with women in pregnancy, trying to get ahead on some of these items. That potentially were causing them issues before. Pregnancy and not everyone has the opportunity to plan so far ahead. Of course, about 50% of pregnancies are planned. But for those of you who are wondering, what can I do? What do I need to do before I get pregnant? These are great things to spend time and energy on so that you're not having to play catch up in pregnancy. It is a lot harder to work on some of these things and pregnancy, because your tools are reduced for what is safe in pregnancy. And you just want to go into pregnancy as healthy as possible. I know that about you. Moving on our timeline now we're. Three months or more. You want to be on a methylated full, late vitamin. This is something that helps to prevent neural tube defects or midline defects. Some of those that we see the most option often are oral restrictions like tongue ties and lip ties. You want to make sure that it is not folic acid that you are taking in this fully supplement. That's why we call it methylated. The reason for that is about 30% of women have a gene mutation called N T H F R. And that makes it really difficult or sometimes impossible for women to methylene vitamins on their own, especially B vitamins and folic acid as a B vitamin or fully. Folic acid is a synthetic form. It's not methylated for women with this gene mutation. They are not able to utilize it. And even more importantly, they're not able to metabolize it. So. It is something that kind of gets dumped in their body and doesn't have a way to get out and can cause a lot of toxicity and symptoms around not being able. To detox or methalate some of these. Vitamins. So you want to know your MTHFR status, if that's possible for you. We have a. Historically been able to offer women in our care and practice a blood test for that. That was $99. That was like this really important. Test. Price that we were able to negotiate with one of our professional co-ops because insurance wants to charge so much money, like sometimes over a thousand dollars to. Participate in this test. However, we have just recently added on at home testing and we have a brand that we've been working with called Rupa health. And I'm going to link that in the show notes for you guys, so that you can take advantage of. This, it's not a blood test that tests for M T H F R. It is an oral swab. So it's incredibly easy to use. It's only $75. They mail you all the materials you send the test back, they get the results back to you within a couple of weeks, and you have your gene mutation status and you can know how important it is to pay attention to this methylation or this homocysteine issue happening in your body. Another note on the Foley V versus folic acid. You want to make sure that you are reading the labels of any enriched grain products that you eat because the United States decided one of the ways that they were going to help us with these neural tube defects for babies was just making sure everybody got folic acid, but as you have just learned. Folic acid is not appropriate for many of us. And so what an important thing. To avoid in your diet. You also We'll want to take a look at all of the options that we have for a preconception supplements. And we will link that in our show notes for you also, so that you know, what supplements you should be taking while you are preparing to conceive. You know, you will see the methylated fully on that list, but I know you want to know all the other things that can be helpful at this stage. And then moving along on the timeline and this can happen any time, but it seems to happen the closer you get to actually getting pregnant. And that is researching, interviewing and consulting with pregnancy care providers. And that means that you have to spend a little bit of time thinking about what kind of pregnancy experience that you want. Or what kind of. Birth, you want what your vision is for your birth, what your hopes and your dreams and your plans are for your birth. And so it forces you to take a little bit of time to think about what birth setting and what birth provider are going to support that vision and dream for you and doing a little bit of research, doing a little bit of digging, even doing some face-to-face meetings with potential care providers is going to make the transition from trying to get pregnant to, oh, now I'm pregnant. Really smooth, you know exactly. Who's going to take care of you, you know, exactly what to expect out of their process for coming into care. And then you have somebody right away that you can start. Asking questions for and getting advice and care from, and anyone who is listening to a podcast about what to do before you get pregnant and the exact timeline you are also going to be the person who wants to have a provider on board. I almost guarantee it. That this listener is ready for as much support as possible surrounding this topic. So. You guys have a lot of information on how to navigate this preconception timeline? I am leaving the prep for pregnancy checklist inside the show notes. It has. It has. this timeline. Delineated for you. It has supplements. It also tells you what to avoid when trying to conceive and should just be a really great resource for you while you navigate this important period of time. We'll also link in those two episodes. So you can continue to gather more information. And finally that N T H F R self test you'll find the link for that. In the show notes here. Thank you ladies for following along on this quick, listen, it was wonderful to share this information with you. We will catch you next Monday with a full episode, Kelly and I together. And until then, See you later.