Afterplay is a must, don’t eat before sex and make sure SHE orgasms… 7 tips to help you conceive
Jani White, writing for Healthista, is a fertility expert. She reveals the most common mistakes couples are making when trying to conceive
Are you at it morning, day and night and still having no baby luck?
The sight of a baby makes your heart melt and you don’t want to wait any longer, you want to start a family.
Although it’s ultimately down to Mother Nature, there are some do’s and don’ts behind the art of conceiving.
Here, writing for , fertility expert Jani White, author of new book The Fertile Fizz reveals what most couples are doing wrong in bed when it comes to getting pregnant and how to get it right.
1. Less focus on ovulation, more focus on the lead up…
Probably the greatest mistake made by couples trying to conceive is the over-emphasis on the ovulatory days.
Of course they are important, vital even.
But, it is just as important to build up the conception energy in the days leading into the ovulation as it is to ‘catch’ those all important peak hormones that give you the smiley face on the ovulation test kits.
The energy that entices the receptivity for conception begins immediately as your period ends.
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The big mistake that many couples make is not putting enough emphasis on building up their sexual energy before ovulation.
So many couples get swept up in the busy day-to-day of life, and very often the sexual agenda is something that is not prioritised until those all important peak fertility days.
I always say to couples: "The chemistry of attraction is the chemistry of conception."
That means, if we want to build our ability to conceive we need to focus on building our sexual energy.
2. Make seduction your priority
One of the biggest misjudgements couples hoping to become pregnant make, is putting aside lovemaking in favour of baby-making.
So let’s go back to the chemical reality of what the body needs in order to conceive.
The chemistry of attraction, that pheromonal ‘fizz’ is exactly the same hormone cascade that affects your ability to conceive.
It’s called the HPG, the hypothalumus-pituitary-gonadal axis, which is a highly attuned, finely balanced feedback loop between the master glands in your brain (hypothalamus-pituitary) and your gonads (the ovaries and testicles).
Your desire kicks off a signal to the limbic system which triggers your dopamine, the "I want" hormone, which in turn is the trigger for your oxytocin, the so called "love hormone".
This domino effect, as one hormone triggers another, is why we call it a hormone cascade.
This desire-driven punch, then triggers the hormones that flurry us into a state of heightened wanting, firing up our oestrogen and testosterone into peak sexuality.
This is our libido - our hormonally driven desire barometer.
It is in this state of wanting that we become most adaptable and receptive to conception.
If we can turn our attention to making seduction the priority, the ability to conceive will naturally be enhanced by our heightened sexual energy.
3. Cuddling, stroking, hand-holding
We cannot emphasise enough the importance of the "love hormone", oxytocin and how essential it is to conception.
We need to know that this mate we have chosen will be well bonded with us as we embark into pregnancy and childbirth.
There needs to be a certainty that this mate will be the one to ensure our safety and wellbeing in the context of caring for an infant and raising a child.
This bonding response is hardwired, entrenched in our DNA.
As such it is impossible to feel safe about having children unless we know that our mate will be there to fend off the sabretooth tigers, slay the woolly mammoth and keep the fire tended as we face the challenges of birthing and caring for an infant in a cave in an uncertain world.
Sounds a bit dramatic? Well, yes, but sabretooths have been replaced by financial stresses and the woolly mammoth is your local Tesco/Sainsbury.
In reality this cave-orientated response is still our fundamental driver in what triggers our hormonal cascades.
We can trigger our oxytocin response through handholding, stroking, eye-gazing, sensual noises and hugging.
Remember what it is like when you first fall in love?
One of the sure fire ways to fire up your reproductive energy is to return to that state of constant contact. They call oxytocin "the love hormone" for a reason.
And, remember that post-ovulation it is just as important to keep your sexual and lovemaking energy kindled.
These oxytocin enhancing tips are vital advice for your luteal phase – the two weeks after the ovulation, the time when a fertilised egg will potentially implant.
During this phase it is important for you both to put a great deal of emphasis and energy into "cherishment".
Show your lover how much you care. Be very aware that now the sperm delivery part is done, it's just as important to focus on maintaining that hormonal vibe between you, from affectionate to rampant, however the mood may take you.
Keeping that physical bond thriving through touch during the luteal phase is a vital ingredient to helping your body to be more receptive to a pregnancy.
Babies want to come and be with happy people. Cherishment during the luteal phase is a sure-fire way to trigger the hormonal receptiveness for conception.
4. Charging your sexual batteries
One of the best ways to stay in the lovemaking frame is to focus instead on the things which bring you to your most sexual state-of-mind. What makes you horny?
It is all too easy in our busy lives to let sex fall down the agenda to a place where it is relegated to the more afterthought.
Afterplay. It’s a lot like foreplay, but it’s afterwards as well as before
Jani White
Or worse yet, when sex becomes a scheduled obligation according to the temperature chart and the ovulation test kit.
Instead of being a joyful experience, sex can become quite mechanical and feel soulless.
Ask yourself, in this last week how much time and energy did you give to the mechanics of living your life, commute, work, shopping and cooking, errands etc?
And in the context of all these regular aspects of daily life, how much time did you give to social media, your email or just browsing the internet?
And in calculating all this time and energy consumption, ask yourself – how much of that time did you spend thinking about ways to charge up your sexual life?
How much time did you give to thinking of ways to seduce your lover? How much time and energy did you devote to finding ways to turn them on? How much time did you spend thinking of, fantasising, about what turns you on?
Babymaking energy is derived out of our sexual energy, and the more time and effort that you give to charging up your sex life, the more you will enhance your enjoyment of lovemaking for it’s own sake.
This is the right frame of heart and mind for making babies. The more we enjoy our lovemaking, the more we enhance our ability to conceive.
5. Make love on an empty stomach
One of the biggest mistakes that many couples make, is that they relegate lovemaking, to the end of the day.
And the reason that can be so detrimental?
Many couples eat far too late in the evening. And so by the time they finally move to the bedroom, they are embarking on sex with a full tummy and hormones that are more focused on digesting food than being sexual.
Most people think of hormones as things that are entirely about sexuality, but in fact all of our physiologic functions are driven by hormones.
One of the biggest misjudgements couples make, time and time again, is the decision to put aside lovemaking in favour of baby-making
When we are digesting food, our endocrine systems (the hormone governing systems) are predominantly exerting all energy on dealing with the big load of food you've just taxed your stomach and intestines with.
This is in order to break it down and absorb all the nutrition and gain the most nourishment.
Now, by all means, we need our nourishment.
All that we are suggesting here is that by prioritising lovemaking in front of digestion you let your hormones prioritise your sexual function.
So, instead of walking through the door and eating first, making love later – try reversing that.
Walk through that door, grab your lover, whisk them into the bath or shower, get naked, wash away the day, and then get to the love making, before you head into the usual evening supper routine.
Not only will you have better sex, less inhibited by the taxation of digestion, but you will then come to your supper with a marvellously increased appetite.
6. Foreplay AND afterplay
Say what?! Afterplay. It’s a lot like foreplay, but it’s afterwards as well as before.
Girls, I’m sure many of you have read that tilting the hips after sex is a good idea, especially on your most fertile days.
And this is no "old wives tale", it is indeed good practice to help pool the semen up against the cervix, especially when you have the clear "egg white" stretchy mucous (Spinnbarkeit).
If you have the dry mucous that you see just after the period ends, you need not tilt hips during these days.
Dry mucous is designed to keep sperm out of your tightly closed cervix.
When that dry mucous begins to shift to wet, and then to stretchy, this is the time for tilting.
This is when the cervix begins to open and create a passageway for the sperm to enter.
What many people do not realise is that a good orgasm is an important part of helping to maximise the potential for the most amount of sperm to move up and through the cervix.
Many years ago Masters and Johnson, the renowned sex therapists, did some groundbreaking research whereby they inserted cameras to record what happens inside a woman during orgasm. What they discovered is that the cervix actually "dips and gulps".
This is a physiologic manoeuvre that helps increase the movement of sperm through the cervix.
Women have a great capacity to orgasm, and, after you have had penetrative sex, you still have the ability to bring her to orgasm.
Even just kissing, cuddling and caressing while tilting her abdomen will enhance the flow of semen through the cervix, and if you can add a wicked twist of the things you know will drive her crazy with desire, then do your utmost to see if you can help her to a further orgasm that will cause her cervix to dip and gulp.
7. Your time of the month is for his pleasure
When you are caught up in the challenges of trying to conceive, it can be very easy to fall into the trap of only putting your sexual energy into the lovemaking that involves sperm delivery.
And so when the dreaded period begins it is, of course, disappointing and quite devastating.
But, it is vital to remember that on day one of your cycle the FSH and LH (follicle stimulating hormone and lutenising hormone) have begun their cyclical flow, and right from day one, the next follicle that may be the potential pregnancy is being growing into your next opportunity to conceive.
It is so important to use this time of the period to focus on the needs of your lover.
That time of the month is a brilliant opportunity for you to focus on lovemaking that has nothing to do with conception – but has everything to do with geeing up the hormonal fizz that is the sexual energy between you.
This time is for foreplay – a time for his pleasure, a focus that has everything to do with why you are lovers and nothing to do with making babies.
By putting a sexual focus into this menstrual phase you are setting up a dynamic that means as you finish the period you are seamlessly stepping into the all important phase two – the pre-ovulatory phase.
This is when it is so important to really emphasise your lovemaking and build up the sexual tension that is going to crest you into the ovulation on an absolute high of wide open, receptive, peak-hormone top of the range ability to give your bodies their best chance to really make a baby.
And so...
In the wise words of fertility expert Emma Cannon, ‘pregnancy is a receptive process. You cannot achieve a pregnancy, you can only receive it’.
All the advice in this article is geared towards just this. By being in your most sexual frame, you will best enhance your ability to receive.
Being receptive to your lover, opening the pathways of lust and longing, is by far the most obvious and correct way to enhance that receptivity for conception.
The chemistry of attraction IS the chemistry of conception.
Take your eye off of the sperm and egg ball and put it firmly back in the court of ‘Hey Baby, how can I make you horny?’
This is by far the best way to make a baby.
This article first appeared on and is republished here with the permission of .