How to get pregnant naturally with PCO / PCOS | REALISTIC TIPS & ADVICE

If you have seen my previous post you'll know how i was feeling about getting pregnant. Can i get pregnant? Will i have to take Clomid like Dr's have been telling me? Will children ever be part of my life? If you are reading this I'm sure you're asking yourself the same questions.
This is a no bulls*it advice and tips post.

WHAT MOST PEOPLE SAY...

I've seen so many blogposts and youtube videos of women saying "I got pregnant naturally and so can you!" but once you start reading it or watching the video you soon realise its not realistic!

"Vegan diet" "Vitamins" "Yoga"

Lets be honest.... not everyone wants to or can do this and i personally don't think it works...for everyone anyway.

MY REALISTIC ADVICE! 

It worked for me so it can work for you. Now, i must add that everyone is different! I can not say that this will 100% work BUT its way more realistic and worked for me.

It's your body at the end of the day.

The first thing i did was BBT (Basal body temperature).

I tracked my cycle with the app 'Clue' and also 'Fertility Friend'.

Every morning before you get up (and try to do it around the same time) you take your temperature.

I used this digital thermometer

Your temperature should stay kind of steady up until you ovulate where you will see a dip and rise.

Sometimes my temps aren't steady but thats pco for you!

(If you are ill or have had hardly any sleep your temperature can be effected).

The second thing you need to do is check your body! Just doing bbt alone will NOT get you pregnant because although it tells you that you have ovulated, you need to know just before that, to become pregnant. Once you've ovulated time is up!

You will soon get the hang of it. This took me a few months to see the pattern of my body.

HOW TO CHECK YOUR BODY

You will notice when you are not near ovulation time your CM (Cervical mucus) will be thicker, gummy and not wet. It may also be a white colour. Don't be scared to touch! In fact this is very important. You need to know when you have the right CM so that you know when you are fertile.

Always wash your hands first obviously. Do not do this when aroused or after sex.

Insert one or two fingers into the vagina all the way, and take your fingers out. You will see your CM on your fingers. If not as some women aren't as "mucusy" you can just push/squeeze some out.

You can also check at the same time your cervix. If its high soft and open you are fertile, its open for sperm to enter. If you are low hard and closed then you aren't fertile. No Vacancy.

This can be tricky to know at first. You'll know if its low as you wont need to reach up as high plus it should feel like the tip of your nose, hard.

The thicker the CM the less likely you are fertile. Sperm cannot get through this thick wall of CM.

The body is amazing right?

So as you go further into your cycle and closer to ovulation time, you will notice your CM become less thick and more loose or watery "Egg whites". They say egg whites because it literally looks like that!

When you start to see clear egg white slippery stringy CM you are fertile!!

Now is the time to have sex and lots of it. I would advise to have sex over a few days around this time. You may also notice your BBT has dropped.

This is why these two things are so important.

When you check your CM and its like egg whites, you will see its wet and stringy. You can literally stretch it between your fingers.

This is how i knew i was fertile. This is how i got pregnant naturally!

My cycle is different every time. It ranges from 40 to 60 to 70 days! I don't know when i ovulate so i had to check my body CM and with the help of my BBT.

Currently writing this I'm 5 months pregnant with a healthy baby.

One thing i would definitely do with these apps is add as much info as possible, and make sure you add when you had unprotected sex. This way it will help you see when or roughly when you conceived.

After you ovulate you will notice your temperature will rise and your CM will be creamy more like hand lotion, wet and may be watery or slightly thick. If you're not pregnant your BBT will stay risen for about a week or so and then drop back down to which you should then start your period. Some people say around 18 days..

If you are pregnant, your BBT will stay risen for well past that time and you may also notice you have way more CM....and trust me you will have more and more as your pregnancy goes on haha.

These are such basic tips but at the end of the day its your body. Your body will tell you when you are fertile.

If you want to see my video on this i will leave it linked here TTC Tips

I also talk about how i was misdiagnosed with PCOS.

Long story short if you didnt know, i have PCO (polycystic ovaries) but not the syndrome, i.e im not overweight, i dont suffer with acne nor do i have excessive hair growth which are some of the syndrome (symptoms that come with pcos)

But i do have very irregular periods, heavy periods and cysts on my ovaries.

I never know when i ovulate due to irregular periods which is one of the reasons why women with pco pcos find it hard to get pregnant.

Now, i know there are other things that can effect becoming pregnant with pcos so if this doesnt work for you then of course get medical advice. One thing i will say though is just because this doesnt work the first time doesnt mean it wont ever. So keep trying. It may be that you did everything correctly but timed sex off... or it may be that you haven't quite got the hang of knowing the right CM yet. 

This worked for me the first time. I was always told by Dr's that i wouldnt get pregnant naturally unless it was "by mistake" "luck"..

But my body showed me otherwise!! I never knew this before so i want to educate other women in my position that you can do it naturally!

I know this may seem like a really long post but i wanted to make sure i gave you advice in a way that is clear and detailed without being long winded or like a chore.

Most importantly RELAX! when your body is tense it wont work.

Relax and you may find yourself pregnant... 🤞 

If you want to see my pregnancy updates then click here > Pregnancy update videos!

I will continue to upload pregnancy videos (what i bought for me or baby / updates / advice)

so subscribe to not miss out.

Thank you so much for the support and I really hope this help and works for you.

Please let me know if it does. I'd love to stay in contact with you.

X

My PCO & PCOS Misdiagnosis. PCO Story & The Phantom Period!

At 18 i decided to go to the Dr because i had awful irregular periods, i was at the end of my tether with it. I had 5 years of just heavy long periods that would usually be every 3 months and last for 12 /13 days. I remember as soon as i mentioned this to my Dr he said straight away that it sounds like PCOS. I had no idea what PCOS was or what it meant, I'd never heard of it before. I thought oh gosh am i sick. Once he had explained quite vaguely and printed out a sheet explaining about PCOS i immediately thought well thats it, that explains why i have such awful periods.

I was sent to the hospital for a blood test and ultrasound scan to check for PCOS and others things such as hormone levels..

I remember the first thing the Dr said was THE PILL. The contraceptive pill. At that age i thought the pill was just for contraception, i didn't know that it could be used for heavy periods or even acne. At 18 i wasn't overly sexually active and always used protection anyway, so i wasn't sure about the pill, but as soon as he said it will make your period a lot lighter, and every month, of course i said yes!

Looking back, he didn't explain what the pill was or how it worked or even what it does to your body! I think that is appalling. I certainly wish i wasn't on the pill for so long and tbh never on it at all.

The pill essentially tricks your body into thinking it is pregnant, which is why you can have unprotected sex and 99% not get pregnant because your egg cannot get fertilised, it stops you ovulating! Which for someone with PCOS thats not what you want as ovulation can be harder in the first place. Your monthly "periods" aren't periods, they are actually what they call "breaks". A break of bleed or what i like to call a fake period.  So you take the pill for 21 days and 7 days of that you have your break "period" and then after your 7 day break, you continue your next pack of pills..

I just think that it should be explained better to girls, it seems so easily given out, like a pack of sweets. A quick fix. A here you go and shut up kinda thing.

My body has changed so much since i was 18. I wish my body could have just been doing what it naturally wants to instead of giving me fake periods and changing my hormones, WHICH in the end i didn't need to! I will get into that in a sec...

I'm now struggling with my periods because of all the years taking the pill.

I was first put on Dianette for a year then put on Yasmin for another but wasn't happy with that so i changed to a different pill which i cannot remember the name of, then finally put on leostrin for the last 4 years.

Back to my scan...I remember having to drink 2pints of water and waiting in a room full of pregnant women feeling very awkward and needing to pee so bad. Once called in, the lady had me lay on the bed, she put jelly on me and started to move the camera around to see my ovaries. I can't remember in full detail as it was back in 2008 but i remember her saying one ovary was larger than the other and that i had cysts on them which looked like PCOS. 

I can't remember what my blood test had shown but as my scan had shown larger ovaries and cysts, then seeing my irregular periods, the dr added that up and said that it was PCOS for sure that i had.

So, since the age of 18 i had been on the pill and always thought i had PCOS. For the past 2 years i had been thinking of coming off the pill as i was just sick of taking it. I also wanted to start thinking of children and knew it could take years for that to happen so the sooner im off the pill the better. The only thing stopping me was the thought of, one, not knowing when my period would start, and two, have heavvvvvy periods again. Heavy as in turn on a tap heavy. Yep.

I got food poisoning at the beginning of feb 2017, age 26, just days before my 27th birthday and thought thats it, this is my time to stop taking it. So i did. I stopped. Since then it has been almost a year!
None of the pills i was on gave me side affects, incase you was wondering.

Durning that year of not taking the pill it took me 6months and 19days to have my first period. I'd never been so happy to have one! It lasted 13 days and was quite normal. It was then another 46 days and my second period started. Again quite normal and lasted 12 days. I remember this time i had bad spots on my chin a few days before it started.

I then had my third period 57 days after that. This one was normal too but a few heavier days. This lasted 13 days. 2 days after it had stopped i started to get spotting of dry blood as it was dark in colour which i found odd. It kept going on for days and every so often i would see fresh blood, like a period was starting.. This continued for a few weeks. I was worried as i had just had my period so why was i continuing to bleed after it. It then got the point of being a full on heavy period, which was just awful. The phantom period.

Overall i was bleeding for 46 days!!

During that time i had gone to the Dr and asked to have blood tests and a scan. My blood test came back saying i had Folic Anaemia, which explained why i was so tired all the time and weak. I had to take folic acid tablets for 2 months and was told not to get pregnant in case of my child having spina bifida..

My hormones came back as fine, so i personally think that for years they probably were fine but i was taking the pill to "correct" something that didn't need correcting. My iron levels came back fine, she said i had rich blood. Everything came back fine apart from the folic acid.

My scan result is what came back to diagnose me as PCO not PCOS.

PCO meaning polycystic ovaries.

I had an external and internal ultrasound. The lady said i had "bulky ovaries with lots of follicles suggesting pcos. Biochemistry advised you haven't got pcos but you have got ovaries that say you have". Basically meaning that my ovaries suggest i have PCO but i dont have the syndrome. The new Dr that helped me the past couple months did keep telling me that i didn't look like someone who has PCOS. I don't and have never had acne, overweight or weight issues and have never had excessive hair growth i.e a beard or hairy back.. like a man would be hence the male hormone that ladies with PCOS tend to have more of. My blood test didn't show abnormal hormone levels.

So i have PCO but not PCOS. Two very different things!

I believe i was misdiagnosed and could have avoided a lot of things and worries throughout the years.

I strongly advise anyone going through this to tell your Dr and make sure you arent misdiagnosed too. I also didn't know until the past month that i have been diagnosed with PCO that it even existed!

Every time i tried to look up PCOS and peoples experience with it, they always said how overweight they were and all these things i simply couldnt connect with, and now i know why!

Let me know your thoughts and any questions! Either tell me in the comments below or tweet me at VParry_

I know this is super long but it wanted to give as much detail as possible.

Once i start trying for children i would love to know if you want me to keep you updated on it or not.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope more women can be aware of this and tell their stories too or even just advice :)

Paresa x

Here is a video where i touch on it briefly.. I will have a whole video dedicated to my pcos story soon. Subscribe to keep updated.

CLICK HERE - PCOS chat..