So overwhelmed and would love guidance on the newest/most updated way to sway girl

[atomic sagebrush]

Ok please do bump this for me as I'm not feeling super well today and am just dashing through a few quick posts. Thank you, realy appreciate it and your patience.

[ForeverMyLove]

Hope you feel better!! Thank you!

Bump

[atomic sagebrush]

one more bump please!! (sorry I have migraines, which are at least 3 days for me, and make it really hard to scroll up and down on longer posts like this)

[ForeverMyLove]

Bump 🙂

Do not apologize at all!! I get migraines, too, and they are the worst. I see specks of light all over the place, any light is painful, I get nauseous and numbing in my hands and lips. It’s crazy and awful. And you are right, they do last a couple days. I really hope you feel better very soon and get lots of rest. Thanks again!

[atomic sagebrush]

She just turned 6, which seems almost impossible to believe!

I'm so glad the site was helpful to you! And thanks again for your patience.

Re just eating less - the dilemma is, when people just eat less food, they very often end up erring on the side of eating too little. The real problem with not tracking is not overdoing it on fat or protein or calories - but not eating ENOUGH. The LE Diet is not only meant to sway pink, but it's also meant to be a healthy pre-pregnancy diet as well and so that is actually the main purpose for having you guys track. When people eat too little, not only does it reduce the ability to get and stay pregnant and even possibly trigger eating disorders, but it will cause your menstrual cycle to get really screwed up, delaying or even stopping ovulation. Then once you've cut back too far, the only way to fix the problem is by eating more (so you can't help but then give your body an increase in nutrients and food!) and so this can even potentially end up undermining your sway, if you have to basically sway blue just in order to get yourself ovulating again!

You don't have to track indefinitely, but even if you could just do it for a few days, even loosely, it can really help you better understand how much you're really taking in.

Re how much coffee/wine - any more than you WERE having is all you need to do. While I generally have people aim at 2-3 coffees and 1 alcoholic beverage a day if you can't get up to that level that is ok as long as it's more than you were doing when you got your boys, or more important, than what you were having recently.

Re prenatals - did you make this switch all of a sudden? If you've been taking prenatals for a while it can really mess up your system just to drop them so I'd take one today and then kind of gradually wean off them by spacing doses instead of suddenly dropping them in favor of folic acid.

Re 2 day cutoff - if your cycle is regular you can still have a 2 day cutoff if you want to. Just because I don't believe in timing, I understand that is important to some people and it's ok to have a cutoff of 2 days. Totally at your discretion. Or, if your cycle is irregular you can get a fertility monitor and have attempt on second "high" reading instead of first peak (positive OPK). Just be sure you know going in that a monitor can give you many days of "high" OR cn go straight to "peak" without any highs so have a Plan B and C in place for either eventuality.

Re pH - totally fine to start off using it and then ditch it if BFN. I don't find a fingerfull of RepHresh to be helpful so I'd stick with the larger amount 12 hours before, then use KY or Sylk as a lube OR a fingertip of Acijel or Replens before BD, whichever you prefer.

Re antihistamine - it hasn't worked at all and really cuts odds of conception considerably. I would hesitate if you want a cutoff AND pH, to add the antihistamine in but many people do want to give it a whirl. Should be among the first things to be dropped though.

RE positions - yeah I seriously doubt this makes any difference at all. Very few people have done standing position - that's among my oldest essays and is not something I believe matters.

OLE has had better results since Day One but I am not convinced that it's a real finding. I originally had only people who were having trouble with male factor infertility or similar fertility challenges using the OLE and I strongly suspect that skewed the results to make OLE look much more effective than it really was. As more and more people started using OLE, the results have plummeted and are now practically identical to the overall success rate of the site (despite starting off very high!) so that leads me to believe more than ever that it's not even doing anything. But neither does cranberry! especially if you were only going to give it to him in a hit and miss way, I'd go with the OLE, absolutely.

Re exercise - if he's willing, unlike most of this stuff, jogging/biking has been proven in studies to sway pink.

Hot shower is a good compromise - better for fertility than hot bath that's for sure. Again not something I"m super sold on.

Re less EWCM - that's the assumption we operate on although we don't completely know this as fact. I have seen plenty of CM opposites (including my own - got my 4th boy with no visible CM and didn't even know I'd ovulated, even checking pH 2-3 times a day, and then my girl while having obvious CM) and so I don't like you guys to read TOO much into it (as in, people who decide "well, I have less CM so I'm going to not even bother doing diet" OR "Well, I haven't noticed less CM so must be time to starve myself" both of which are regularly occurring things around here, unfortunately). So while it's great you're noticing less CM, don't rush into your sway on that basis and if over time you notice more than you have lately, don't assume you're on the wrong track, either.

Everything else is looking right on track to me!

[ForeverMyLove]

Thank you so much Atomic! Hope you are feeling better!

I will start writing down what I eat so I can get a better idea. I think thats the best option. With exercising and chasing around three little ones, I need to eat so I definitely will not be starving myself. I totally understand about eating healthy in order to fall pregnant. I do have a specific question regarding the LE diet that I forgot about...with skipping breakfast, is it because you want over 12 hours of not eating or a certain number of hours of not eating after you wake up, so like 3 hours? I hope that makes sense.

I forgot to ask, should the coffee be caffeinated or caffeine free? I have caffeinated coffee in the morning but don't always in the afternoon.

The OPK stuff is confusing. I don't plan to do timing. Based on your recommendation, I would like to BD 2 days before O if I can and only one attempt. But if you think doing it 1 day before ovulation or on ovulation for the one attempt is good, too, I am fine with that, as well. My cycles are not perfect but not extremely irregular so I would probably use an OPK or fertility monitor (I need to look into this). When you mentioned this, "Just be sure you know going in that a monitor can give you many days of "high" OR cn go straight to "peak" without any highs so have a Plan B and C in place for either eventuality." Do you mean that the OPK can be faulty sometimes or that a fertility monitor can give you several fertile days before peak/ovulation days or non at all? What would be other plans of action in case of this?

So no rephresh right before BD, correct? It might kill too much sperm? Only 12 hours before and "use KY or Sylk as a lube OR a fingertip of Acijel or Replens before BD?" Do I need to use this before or can I use nothing? Not sure what is better.

I am not going to do an antihistamine or worry about positions. Since I don't like cranberry and it doesn't look like it is effective for swaying, I don't plan to give it to my hubby at all. I will stick with OLE. And I am not worrying about CM. Thank you!

Lastly, the one attempt and LE diet seem to be the most important aspects of swaying girl. If I included PH for a cycle or two and hubby hot shower, jump and dump, (probably not shallow penetration), then will I be left with any living sperm? I don't want to overdo it, which is my main concern because ultimately, I do want to get pregnant in a reasonable amount of time. Lol.

Also, I forgot, for the LE diet, do you want low carbs and low protein? Or is one more important to focus on than the other? I think it will be harder to do both.

Thanks again so much!

[atomic sagebrush]

Yes I am, thanks!

You want a long fasting period every day. 12-16 hours. You don't have to skip breakfast, some people find it easier to have dinner very early and go overnight. The majority of people find it easier to wait a while to eat breakfast. Just do whichever option works for you as long as you have 12-16 hours with no food coming in.

We do not know if it's caffeine or something in coffee itself. To err on the side of caution I have you guys use caffeinated coffee just in case but decaf may very well be good too.

Both OPK and fertility monitors can be faulty, unfortunately. The OPK can give false positives and false negatives and many days of positives., and the monitors can do that too, PLUS going from low fertility right to peak. I don't mention all that to try to confuse, just because it's good for people to have backup plans in place if the OPK/monitors do unexpected things.

The backup plans would vary depending on the situation and since it would be quite time consuming to go over all of them I'd prefer to wait to see how it goes for you and advise you at that time, if that is ok. Most likely scenario is that it goes according to plan.

RepHresh immediately before intercourse has three downsides. Firstly it may kill sperm, secondly, it may not have time to work and may cause your pH to temporarily spike upon insertion. but more importantly, it is a TERRIBLE lube and gets really gummy and sticky. So if you need/want to use something right before intercourse (either as a lube or for pH) then please use KY or Sylk for their lube purposes (they should also lower pH) OR Acijel or Replens if you're worried specifically about pH as these are also inferior lubes. You can absolutely use nothing. We honestly do not know what is best. NO lubes have gotten anything better than neutral results - same number of people getting girls with and without them. They also cut odds of conception considerably so take that into account.

LE Diet longer than 12 weeks plus fiber, coffee, alcohol and dropping vitamins and fortified foods and probiotics, exercise, one attempt, clomid/Femara if you can get them. For DH, jogging/biking and smoking. These are the things that really seem to make a proven difference above the overall success rate of the site. The rest of the stuff, while it may sway a little like if we were doing a study in 1000 couples doing nothing else to sway, gets lost in the shuffle and ends up doing nothing but cutting odds of conception.

So to answer your question, yes that is the concern - when you do EVERYTHING you end up cutting odds of conception to nothing. Now, many people will say "well I don't care if I go on and on till menopause not geting pregnant, I want to do all these things" but what invariably happens is that they'll go on and on not getting pregnant, and either they'll do diet and exercise so hard that their ovulation stops and they basically have to sway blue just to get it going again. OR, they underestimate how hard it is to see those BFN pile up and so they'll panic somewhere around 6-8 months of TTC, decide they have "made themselves infertile" from swaying or are in menopause and then panic and drop everything all in one month, and even start doing things that boost fertility just to get pregnant at all. This generally happens within one month LOL and either of these two scenarios is a recipe for another boy. So to my way of thinking, it's by far best to start off with at least a snowball's chance of conceiving to start with and to quickly drop the things that have been shown to do little to nothing and really cut odds of conception at the same time.

And as for those people you read about on other sites who claim they did all this stuff and got pregnant in one month? Based on our results here over the course of 8 years now, I have to say they're either insanely lucky or they are fibbing because we have trouble conceiving on this site even with relatively light sways. The sways that have 7 day cutoffs, marathon douching, eating 500 cals a day for months, taking massive herb doses, husbands wearing jocks and sitting in saunas etc, etc, etc simply cannot be conceiving that way when we have trouble getting pregnant just doing a little jelly and 2 day long cutoffs! So take those things with a huge, huge grain of salt because they very likely are not true or are lightning strike events.

LE Diet is not low carb. It's lower protein, lower fat, lower calorie than you were eating and most people will end UP getting fewer carbs (even though the overall percent of carbs in their diet goes UP!). To illustrate, if you were eating 3000 cals a day, 90 g protein, 70 g fat a day, you'd be getting 360 calories from protein, 630 cals of fat (we'll round this and make it about 1000 cals from protein and fat) is 500 g of carbs (that is a LOT of carbs. low carb diets are generally below 100 or even 50 g carbs. On the standard LE Diet, you would be getting 40-50 g calories from protein (160-200 calories from protein) and 30-60 g (270-720 cals) from fat and eating about 1500-1800 cals a day. To make it easy we'll say 200 cals from protein, 500 cals from fat, giving us 700 cals from protein and fat, and 800-1000 cals from carbs. This would be 200-250 g carbs - not a low carb diet to be sure but for most people, even those who eat nowhere near 3000 cals to start with, LE Diet will both be lower carb than they WERE eating but still is NOT a low carb diet.

It is IMPOSSIBLE for a diet to be low fat, low protein, low calorie, and low carb. That type of diet would be a starvation diet and is not allowed. But it IS possible to eat lower than you WERE on all those things. That having been said you do NOT need to eat lower carb than you were. Lower carb is not a fundamental part of LE Diet, only the lower protein, lower fat, and lower cal.

(please don't make me do any more math)

[ForeverMyLove]

Sounds great! I think that sounds like a good idea to wait and see how things go. I appreciate all the help!!

[ForeverMyLove]

Hi again Atomic! I am planning on ttc for the first time this month. I should ovulate in a few days. Since it's my first month of ttc, I plan to start off doing the Rephresh. Is it important to do it 12 hours before to get the benefit or can I do it like 24 hours before? How crucial is the timing of it? Again, I don't want to kill all the sperm and my main focus is more diet and the one attempt. This is just a little extra since i just started ttc. Thanks so much!

[atomic sagebrush]

24 hours before is better for chances of conception. I have seen pretty low conception rates with the 8-12 hours. Now, it may be that 24 hours doesn't do anything either, so that's the consideration! Just something we can't really know for sure without doing a more scientific study than we are able to do here.