Conception requires careful planning, as achieving a healthy pregnancy requires preparing the body and mind well in advance. It requires ensuring good health pre-conception by making conscious choices that support the body, mind, and reproductive system. This process is called pre-conception planning. It helps women prepare body for pregnancy by ensuring good fertility, reducing avoidable risks, and promoting long-term reproductive health.

For instance, the prior choice of contraception can have an impact on women's reproductive health while reversing contraception and planning for pregnancy. So, even choosing the right contraception can be an important aspect of pre-conception planning.

This article explains the process of pre-conception planning. It lists the essential elements, including pre-conception nutrition, health checklist, and counselling. It also explains the importance of contraceptive choice for a healthy pregnancy.

What Is Pre-Conception Planning and When Should You Start?

Pre-conception planning is the process of preparing for a pregnancy, following a series of steps and checks before trying to conceive. It aims at creating favourable conditions for conception and a healthy pregnancy.

The four aspects of pre-conception planning are:

• Tests to assess physical health - to ensure you are physically strong enough for a healthy pregnancy, and diagnose any pre-existing condition and treat it before pregnancy.
• Ensuring optimised pre-conception nutrition - to make sure your nutritional store supports pregnancy, early foetal development, childbirth, and recovery.
• Achieving emotional well-being - to maintain hormonal balance, which has an impact on fertility, manage stress, and attain mental readiness for pregnancy.
• Ensuring reproductive health - to regulate menstrual cycles and ensure good fertility.

Meeting these four requirements is crucial for a healthy pregnancy. So, to achieve physical, emotional, and reproductive wellness before conception, you must prepare for your pregnancy well in advance by completing health checks, taking prescribed medication and supplements, following a personalised diet plan to meet nutritional targets, and following recommended practices to address stress and attain emotional wellness.

Taking adequate time to prepare yourself for a pregnancy helps your body and mind to adapt. At the same time, it helps you address any pre-conception health concerns and nutritional deficiencies before pregnancy. Ideally, it takes at least three to six months of pre-conception care before trying to conceive. However, the earlier you plan, the better.

Preparing Your Body for Pregnancy

Preparing your body for pregnancy involves ensuring physical and mental well-being with:

1. Pre-Pregnancy Health Checklist

Preparing the body for pregnancy starts with tracking and evaluating basic health parameters to understand your overall health. A simple pre-pregnancy health checklist includes:

• Checking weight
• Identifying existing medical conditions and managing them
• Screening for infections
• Reviewing medications
• Reviewing reproductive health, hormonal balance and fertility
• Tracking the menstrual health, ovulation patterns, and cycle length
• Tracking factors affecting mental wellness, including sleep quality, stress levels, and emotional readiness
• Reviewing contraceptive history

2. Preconception Nutrition Essentials

Pregnancy, foetal development, and childbirth place high nutritional demands on your body. They can deplete your nutritional reserve and weaken you. That is why child spacing is recommended post-childbirth.

To meet these high nutritional demands, before pregnancy, it is indispensable to ensure adequate intake of key nutrients, including:

• Folic acid
• Iron
• Calcium
• Iodine
• Vitamin D
• Balanced proteins

The right nutrition supports pre-conception health, fertility, a healthy pregnancy, and early foetal development.

3. Pre-Conception Counselling

Pre-conception counselling is an integral part of pre-conception planning. It equips you with the knowledge and understanding to make informed health decisions with confidence. It personalises preparation and helps you clarify important details regarding conception and pregnancy, including:

• Individual timelines - determining when your body may be ready for conception, based on age, health, lifestyle, and contraceptive use, and how soon fertility may return after stopping contraception
• Fertility awareness - identifying ovulation timeline and fertile window, explaining fertility tracking, and identifying cycle regularity to address delays in conception
• Health needs - addressing the factors affecting fertility and pregnancy outcomes, such as medical, nutritional, or lifestyle factors

Contraception Choices and Fertility: Planning Pregnancy the Right Way

One important decision made during this phase is the contraceptive choice. While it may sound counterintuitive to evaluate contraceptive choices during pre-conception counselling, it is vital to keep in mind that until you are ready, you need a reversible contraception method that ensures hormonal balance, regular menstrual cycles, and good reproductive health, and avoids any side effects. Contraception choices can also influence how smoothly the transition into pregnancy occurs when the time feels right.

Many women worry about fertility after long-term contraceptive use. Oral Contraceptive Pills (OCPs) are among the most effective contraception methods available for women. While hormonal pills, like most other contraception methods, are reversible, the experience of transitioning from using them to stopping their use before conception can vary.

Hormonal pills achieve contraception by altering hormonal signals to prevent ovulation; so they affect natural hormonal balance. They can also cause numerous side effects and temporary changes in cycle regularity, which can affect how quickly natural cycles resume.

So, it is essential to choose non-hormonal contraceptive methods that do not interfere with the body's hormonal balance and allow easy and predictable reversal.

Saheli Plus and Pre-Conception Planning: Supporting Easy Reversal and Hormonal Balance

Saheli Plus is a non-hormonal contraceptive that supports pre-conception planning goals. It is reversible and does not affect your body's natural hormonal balance. It allows you to plan a pregnancy with confidence and clarity.

Saheli Plus is a suitable contraceptive for women planning pregnancy because:

• It is a non-hormonal contraceptive that does not affect natural hormonal balance.
• With no impact on hormonal balance, it supports the regularity of menstrual cycles.
• It is easily reversible and ensures a quick fertility return after discontinuation.
• It supports reproductive health.
• It is as effective as hormonal pills, so you can use it with confidence till you can reverse it and try to conceive.

For women who prefer a smoother, less anxious transition into pre-conception planning and want reassurance about fertility, Saheli Plus offers a safe and effective alternative to hormonal pills.

Final Thoughts: Preparing Today for a Healthy Tomorrow

Pre-conception planning ensures physical and mental wellness - the prerequisites for a healthy pregnancy and long-term reproductive health. It offers a comprehensive package of health checks, nutrition, counselling, and the right contraception choices, so you can approach pregnancy with confidence. Thoughtful preparation today lays the foundation for a healthier tomorrow.

FAQs

1. How to conceive after using contraceptives?

You can reverse the contraceptive action by stopping the contraceptive usage. After that, you can let menstrual cycles normalise, focus on nutrition, track ovulation, and seek preconception counselling to prepare for a healthy pregnancy.

2. How long after OCP use can you get pregnant?

Most women regain fertility soon after stopping OCPs. However, in some cases, it may take more time for natural hormonal cycles to re-establish.

3. What is pre-conception planning?

Preconception planning is the process of preparing for a pregnancy. It involves ensuring physical health, nutrition, emotional well-being, and reproductive readiness before pregnancy. Pre-conception planning supports fertility and healthy pregnancy outcomes.