There are things you can do now before you try for a baby that will affect your fertility and the health of your baby.

Your health before pregnancy will affect the lifelong health of your baby. By following the advice below you can:

• improve your fertility
• protect your baby’s future health
• bring down your risk of problems in pregnancy.

Once you start trying for a baby (have stopped contraception) you won’t know you’re pregnant for the first few weeks.

So, if you’re trying for a baby, making these changes sooner rather than later will give you peace of mind when you get pregnant.

What to do

1. Get help to stop smoking

Smoking affects fertility (the ability to get pregnant) in men and women. If you stop smoking now it will improve your chances of conceiving. Smoking has also been shown to damage the DNA of your baby. During …

There is nothing that can make you feel more alone—or stressed out—than trying to conceive. While you might have spent the better part of your youth doing all that you could to not get pregnant, when you’re ready to build your family and the going gets tough, it’s normal to have anxiety. Though TTC can feel exhausting, frustrating and lonely, the CDC estimates that more than ten percent of all couples will struggle with fertility—that’s 1 in 10 partnerships. Whenever you’re feeling discouraged, take a read of these inspiring stories.

The Fosters

Got Pregnant In: 2 years

Their Story: After getting married in 2001, Ashley and James began trying to conceive. “When we first started trying, I was obsessive and bought many pregnancy tests even if I knew my period was coming,” says Ashley. “We probably spent hundreds of dollars on tests. We viewed making love as work, and …

To optimize women’s fertility, taking better care of their bodies is a good first step. But what else can women do to improve their odds of having a baby?

The most important advice for a woman who wants to get pregnant is to get to know her body, specifically her menstrual cycle, said Dr. Ellen Turner, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist and medical director of the in-vitro fertilization program at Northwestern Medicine’s Fertility and Reproductive Medicine department in Chicago.

“It’s important to know how far apart her cycles are so she can more accurately time intercourse to try to get pregnant,” Turner said.

Here are 10 tips that may help increase a healthy woman’s chances of becoming pregnant.

1. Record menstrual cycle frequency

A woman who wants to have a baby should monitor whether the first days of her periods tend to come the same number of days apart …