When doctors talk about fertility and infertility, they often specifically mean ‘your chances of getting pregnant over a given stretch of time’ – often a year. This means anything you can do that improves your chances of getting pregnant, from taking supplements, to tracking your basal body temperature with a thermometer and graph paper, can effectively boost your fertility!
Some of the things you can do that help you get pregnant have been done for decades if not centuries: BBT tracking is an age old method of finding the best time to get pregnant, but it can be onerous; some supplements and foods have a reputation for improving fertility that have been passed down through families. Others are new innovations for the age of smart phones and digital devices – or refinements of older methods, made easier and more accessible. Today we’re taking a look at how technology can boost your chances of getting pregnant and therefore, your fertility!
Timing it Right
One of the most important things you can do to improve your fertility is to find out when in each month (or rather, menstrual cycle) your fertility is at its peak. Your body is ready for pregnancy for a surprisingly short time in each cycle: only five or six days around the date you ovulate. To boost your chances, you need to know when you will ovulate so can plan to try to get pregnant in the five days before and day after you ovulate.
A digital ovulation sensor can help you here, by telling you when are ovulating, and even better, predicting when it will happen in advance! There are different methods that these devices use: some test your hormones (these will often ask you to insert a test stick in your urine to get readings), some track your temperature, some simply work from the dates of your period and a calendar.
Wearable Technology
Some of the most exciting advances come in the form of wearable technology. As we saw above, many ovulation trackers require some input from you, whether that’s using a temperature sensor to find out what happens in your body overnight or testing for hormones. Wearable technology paints a different way forward: a simple watch-like device which monitors your temperature, heartrate and other important details as you go about your day, and provides a constantly refined and updated predictions based on the results!
This technology is in its infancy, which means its expensive, and you’ll need to research to make sure you’re buying an accurate option, but it could be the perfect solution for you!