So those wedding bells have rung, you’ve come back from your honeymoon and now it’s time to think seriously about starting a family.
Parenthood is a major milestone in your married life and the first thing to know about it is preparation; not just on the mental, emotional and physical aspects of the journey but also on the financial front for maternity costs as well as everyday expenses for raising your child.
Let’s face it. Bringing on children is a serious affair. The more prepared you are about taking up the challenge, the more likely you are to succeed; not just at baby-making but also at becoming a parent.
Here are some things you should be looking at:
1. Build Up Your Savings
Liquidity at hand is a must. It is absolutely necessary to come out with cash to pay for prenatal care, delivery expenses, postnatal and confinement help, nursery décor, baby prerequisites and accessories like bottles, sterilizer sets, breast pumps, diapers, milk, and so on. These things cost money. Not only that, they are going to be recurrent costs for many, many years after the birth.
Quite a number of financial comparison sites as well as the Edge Markets have said that the cost of raising a child from birth to university graduation would cost around RM400,000 to RM1.3million these days. That’s a huge sum to account for!
Obviously, one of the first steps to prepare for this outlay is to free up cash flow. Settle your debts as much as you can. Get rid of that car loan, personal loan, credit card and other extraneous expenditure on hire purchase or installment plans. With the extra money saved, start a “baby expenditure” savings account. Financial preparation will help ease a lot of stress (marital or otherwise) associated with money, or the lack thereof.
2. Manage Pre-Existing Health Conditions
If you are currently having medical issues like fibroids, high blood pressure, asthma, diabetes, thyroid dysfunction or are overweight or underweight, get these issues fixed or managed before trying for a baby. Mental health issues such as depression or bi-polar disorders are also considered a pre-existing condition.
The thing about pregnancy is that upon conception, your body will release a surge of hormones, some or all of which may trigger or worsen the pre-existing illness, causing complications.
It can affect the developing baby and can increase risks.
3. Quit Unhealthy Habits
Stop smoking, cut down on alcohol and high caffeine and sugar consumption. Mothers who smoke are more likely to miscarry or have pre-term delivery, birth defects and low-birthweight babies as this NCBI research will tell you.
But even without the research, there is enough evidence from all around that smoking is bad for you and definitely worse for a developing foetus that needs oxygen to thrive.
The same can be said for high coffee consumption of over 200mg a day. If coffee must be drunk, then an 8-ounce cup a day may be okay as that comes up to about 140mg). Generally speaking, pregnant women should limit caffeine intake to less than 200mg per day and that includes tea, chocolate beverages, fizzy sodas (especially dark coloured ones) and energy drinks.
Practice Healthy Eating and Active Lifestyles
Try to eat as healthily as possible to have the right nutrients to support the growth and development of the baby. To get the necessary nutrients, eat from a variety of food groups, including fruits and vegetables, bread and grains, protein sources and dairy products. As the baby grows, you will need to consume an extra 300 calories a day to sustain the increasing demand for nutrients.
Practice an active lifestyle but don’t overdo being active. Exercise is encouraged for sure but never over exercise. Studies have shown that strenuous, intense exercise of more than five hours a week has been associated with decreased ovulation. The punishing stress makes your body think it should not encourage fertility. Your physical body does have a mind of its own, you know, contrary to what your real mind is thinking. Your pituitary gland, for example, may not encourage ovulation because it is simply trying to protect you from the added stress and demands of growing a baby. You can’t have a baby if you don’t ovulate.
However this doesn’t mean that you can’t go on doing the workouts you have been doing since before getting pregnant, so long as your pregnancy is not high risk and you are under the supervision of your doctor.
4. Take Folic Acid
Folic Acid is paramount in preventing birth defects of the baby’s brain, spine and spinal cord development. Research has shown that taking folic acid before getting pregnant and in early pregnancy prevents the baby from getting neural tube defects (NTDs) such as spina bifida and anencephaly. NTDs often happen in the first month of pregnancy, before a woman even knows she is pregnant. All women who are planning for a pregnancy should therefore take 400micrograms of folic acid daily as a preventive measure. Folic Acid is a B vitamin (B9) and is a wonder as it is the key ingredient of nucleic acid that forms a part of all genetic materials.
5. Hubby to Boost Sperm Quality
Don’t forget the other all-important component to baby-making, and that is your husband’s contribution. It takes two to make a baby after all. His health counts too.
He should drastically cut down or quit smoking altogether and ease up on alcohol consumption as it will affect his sperm quality, count and motility.
If obese or overweight, he should lose weight as it will affect his fertility and virility.
Since sperm is produced in the testes, he should keep cool in boxer shorts and avoid too much sauna and steam spas.
Knowledge is King ─ Know Your Menstrual Cycle and Pinpoint Your Fertile Days
Knowledge is King as they say. Before you know if you can plan for a baby, you need to keep a menstrual cycle calendar because having one helps you know when your period is going to come, when you are going to ovulate and most likely to conceive. You will also need to have an understanding of how your body works and when to have sex to maximize your chances.
If you are having sex on the wrong days or on days that you are infertile, chances are ─ you won’t get pregnant. And that could be devastating if you want a baby badly.
6. Use Pregnancy and Ovulation Test Kits to Get Best Results
One if the best ways of finding out when the best days are to make a baby is to invest in pregnancy and ovulation test kits.
There are many pregnancy and fertility test kits out there, but if you want one that maximizes your chances of conception, Clearblue gives you digital accuracy in pinpointing the two days when you are most fertile and most likely to conceive.
- Clearblue Digital Ovulation Test
What it does is ─ it measures the level of a key fertility hormone called luteinising hormone (LH) in your urine. All you need to do is to hold the tip of the Clearblue test stick in your urine stream for five seconds and it will tell you, through a digital smiley face appearing on the test stick, your two most fertile days prior to ovulation. This smiley face is to indicate to you that you can make love any time in the next 48 hours so that you can place the sperm in prime position to fertilise your egg the moment you release it.
Another advantage of using Clearblue Digital Ovulation test is that will take the guesswork out of predicting your ovulation, not to mention all the hassles associated with manual methods such as taking your basal body temperature every morning, tracking your menstrual cycle on a calendar or manually monitoring your cervical mucus or saliva. These methods are not very accurate and cannot really time when you are about to ovulate.
If you make love after you have ovulated, it would be too late to get pregnant. After all, in every menstrual cycle, there are really only a few days when a woman can conceive. Timing is therefore, everything.
- Clearblue Digital Pregnancy Test with Conception Indicator
Most women will only suspect they are pregnant when their period is late. Why not find out early? With Clearblue Digital Pregnancy Test with Conception Indicator, you will know whether or not you are already pregnant even before the due date of your period. Yes, you can test up to four days before your period is due!
And if you are doing a urine test with the Conception Indicator, it can even tell you how many weeks old your baby is and how far along your pregnancy you have come. You could already be one to two, two to three or more than three weeks pregnant by the time you find out.
Clearblue has a product for you at each stage of your life cycle: Clearblue Digital Ovulation Test, Clearblue Digital Pregnancy Test with Conception Indicator, Clearblue Plus Pregnancy Test and Clearblue Easy Pregnancy Test.
Each one has specific features to address each way a woman wants to manage her reproductive health, and each one promises over 99% accuracy. It’s as accurate as a doctor’s test.
This way, you get clear answers and a clear mind. Try it today.
Clearblue has more answers for you in its website. Visit to find out more.