5 ways to improve your chances of a honeymoon or holiday baby

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Although it is tempting to want to ‘make a baby’ on holiday or honeymoon, it can put undue pressure on you and your partner. Even if you are both on the same page and wanting to start a family, it is still advisable to keep a lightness of touch around affairs of the bedroom. That said there are things you can do to optimize falling pregnant on, or shortly after, your holiday or honeymoon. Here are my top 5 baby making tips:

  1. Book somewhere in the Mediterranean; research suggests that the Mediterranean diet is optimal for fertility. It is a diet high in antioxidant rich vegetables, oily fish, olive oil, dairy products, beans and only a small amount of red meat and poultry. All of this meaning that it is highly beneficial for natural conception and for those attempting IVF.

  2. Pick somewhere with plenty of sunshine; sunlight increases vitamin D, which balances sex hormones in women and improves sperm count in men. Given enough time in sunlight we can get all the vitamin D required for health. Increasingly people lack vitamin D due to long periods of time spent inside away from natural sunlight. Although the research is still inconclusive, several studies have found that Vitamin D blood levels of 30ng/mL or higher are linked to higher pregnancy rates.

  3. Be patient. Try to relax and don’t turn your time away together into ‘Operation Make a Baby’. This is a mistake that many modern couples make and one that often creates a lot of stress and anxiety. Deciding to start trying for a baby is not the same as planning a wedding or climbing the career ladder. It is often not quite as easy as you might have first thought. Having spent most of your life trying to avoid being pregnant, you now want a baby and you want it NOW! It can be quite a shock to women that even if they ‘do everything right’ conception does not happen straight away. It is important to consider that this does not mean there is anything wrong, simply that in some couples it takes longer.

  4. Laugh a lot; research suggests that when we are happy we produce more feel good hormones like serotonin, dopamine and endorphins, which switch the body from fight or flight to feed and breed which is optimal for conception.

  5. Sex in the morning; take advantage of being able to lie in and have morning sex! Although the evidence only suggests a very small increase in sperm quality in the morning; libido is almost certainly better in the morning after a good nights sleep.