By Brandi Jeter

Brandi works in partnership with First Response to share her pregnancy stories. This story was originally featured on her blog, Mama Knows it All.

It was a last-minute decision to cancel my appointment with the IVF doctor. Terrence and I had been trying to get pregnant for months, and I was starting to feel discouraged. I wanted to have another baby so badly, but it just wasn’t happening. The first time I got pregnant, I didn’t even try, so I never expected it to be difficult to have a baby the second time around. As each month passed, I started to think that maybe it wasn’t in the cards for us.

I made the IVF appointment one day when I was feeling particularly frustrated by my fertility woes. It was expensive, but I thought it’d be worth it if I could get pregnant. Terrence was supportive and willing to do whatever I wanted, even though he was still hopeful that we’d get pregnant naturally.

When I called to cancel the appointment, I had Terrence’s faith in mind. I figured we could give getting pregnant one last, super intentional shot. We would go all in, and if I didn’t end up pregnant, then we would accept our fate and move forward being the best parents we could to the little girl we already had.

I was thrilled to discover I was pregnant a month later. Being intentional worked! I had been doing a lot of things to improve my chances of conceiving, but never all at once. Here’s what I did to (finally) get pregnant the second time around. I put all of these things together and 9 months later, I was giving birth to my little baby boy.

Changed my diet

Before I got pregnant, my diet was terrible. I ate a lot of carbs and sugar, and was desperately in need of more leafy greens. I read a few books that suggested a healthy diet could aid fertility, so I eliminated a lot of the bad stuff I was eating and replaced it with fresh fruits and vegetables. I also increased my water intake and stopped drinking coffee.

Tracked my cycle

As you may have read in my other blog post, I entered my dates and used the First Response Pregnancy Tracker & Cycle Tracker app to track my cycle to make sure I knew an approximate time of when I was ovulating and most fertile. I became an expert at knowing where I was in my cycle, and which days were likely to be best for conceiving.

Thought positively

As difficult as it was to believe I could get pregnant, I knew I had to think positively. My energy for the month was one of hopefulness and expectancy. I believed that the outcome would be positive, and I’m grateful that it was.

Used Pre-Seed Fertility Friendly Personal Lubricant

My best friend told me about Pre-Seed Fertility Friendly Personal Lubricant from the Makers of First Response and said that it was suggested in all of the fertility forums that she visited. Pre-Seed is a personal lubricant that mimics cervical fluid to support sperm on their journey!