How I Got Pregnant in Two Cycles

A few months ago, I wrote an article about my first pregnancy experience two years ago at age 36. Fast forward to today, and here I am again, pregnant in two cycles with my second child at the ripe advanced maternal age of 38.

Below are some ways that may have contributed to getting pregnant in two cycles:

Get fit(ter)

Getting fitter is usually on most people’s to-do list. As a curvy mummy, I knew that getting fitter would only be better for me and make it easier to conceive again. I returned to the gym as soon as I felt up to it. I decided to see a personal trainer over the winter months to give me that push I needed to work on other areas of my body that I wouldn’t have otherwise worked if I just went to my Zumba classes. And it worked! I started feeling fitter and losing weight. I might have gained it all back again by the time I fell pregnant, but that coincided with the end of breastfeeding. More on that later.

Planning it out

Pretty much as soon as we had our daughter, we knew we wanted a second child. As a mother of advanced maternal age, we decided that having kids around two years apart would be ideal. I wouldn’t be “too old,” and the kids would be close enough in age to hopefully enjoy each other’s company. We are also having our wedding next year and knew that we didn’t want a newborn at the wedding or for me to be too close to popping. Anything on either side of that was fine! This also meant timing when to come off contraception. I had my implant taken out at the end of the previous year, ready to start trying before our baby was one. You never really know how long it will take to get pregnant, so giving myself the time to get my body back to a hormone-free cycle was the way to go.

Apps we used

To help us plan when to get busy, we used an app. There are so many ovulation apps to choose from these days. With my previous pregnancy, I was paying for an app called Natural Cycles, which is an approved British paid app that comes with a thermometer to measure your temperature every morning before you fully wake up and are out of bed. I had no interest in doing that again with a one-year-old in tow. I was already paying for the Fitbit app so it made sense to continue using that one. You enter your personal data and log in your last period. At the time I hadn’t had a postpartum period in which to enter, so it was difficult to track my cycle. We still tried as soon as we could, but without having any clear understanding of when I was ovulating.

Periods and breastfeeding

Breastfeeding can be a natural contraceptive, and this was the case for me. I knew that ending my breastfeeding journey was going to be the best way for me to conceive more quickly. Luckily, we were ready for that. I needed to go on school camp, and therefore we needed to be wean bub off the boob. For me, this meant that I didn’t get my first postpartum period until 14 months postpartum. But when I did, I knew that this meant I could actually get pregnant and give my app some data to work with. I was a little disappointed when my second period rolled in, and I wasn’t pregnant, but again, this was more data for my app to predict my ovulation more precisely. At this point, I knew it could happen if I timed it right this month. My second period came seven weeks after the first. Irregular periods are common when you are just getting them back again, but it does make it harder to track.

Many moms have said that they were at their slimmest when they were breastfeeding, you are consuming more calories in the process of creating milk, but when you end that journey, you might gain it back again. This is where we loop back to getting fitter to get ready for baby number two.

Ovulation strips

Ovulation strips would be my biggest tip. I used them alongside the app and also started using them as soon as my contraceptive implant was taken out. It can’t hurt, right? And without any data to work from, the ovulation strips were all I had. The ovulation strips I used were much like a pregnancy test. Dip the stick in your pee and check the info on the box. For this set, you need the test line to come out darker than the control line. You can see the darkness of that test line changing if you are testing every day. First thing in the morning your hormone levels will be the most potent, so that’s a great time to measure. Any brand will do, I got mine online from Walmart. I kept each strip for a few days to be able to see any gradual change in the strip. When it gets dark enough, go for it!

Actively trying and pregnancy tests

When the app says you are nearly ovulating, it’s time to start getting it on! The advice I received from the doctor was to start trying a few days before you ovulate and skip every other day, to allow some time for his sperm count to jump back up again. Going for a few days after you ovulate helps too. I might have gotten a little overexcited and took a pregnancy test 5 days before an expected 28-day cycle period, but thought that another 7ish week time difference would be more accurate. And guess what, I wasn’t testing pregnant. So I waited a few more days and tested again. Still nothing. A week, nothing. Not pregnant.

By the time 50 days had gone by with no sign of a period or a pregnancy, I called my doctor as that seemed like an awfully long between periods. I took another test that night and it came up so very faintly pregnant. I used a dipstick test very similar to my ovulation tests. Then I thought I should try to test again, so I did another with the same, very faint results. The next day I took another pregnancy test, a regular Clear Blue kind with the two lines. Still only vaguely pregnant. By this point, I couldn’t wait any further and went to Walmart got another box of tests with the plus indicator instead, and took the test right there in the Walmart bathroom. Pregnant!

So here I am, 38 years old, pregnant in two cycles with baby number 2 coming in March 2025!