Tracking, Timing & Trying: A Day in the Life

Dear diary,

Today is day seventeen. Every app says I’m due to ovulate within the next five days. The

amount of LH test strips filling my garbage can in the washroom is absurd. My husband laughs, calls me crazy, says to stop thinking about it and we’re doing everything we can. I wish it were that easy, to turn off the thoughts, to focus on something, anything else.

I told myself I was going to stay positive and do my best to let the stress wash away. I’ve been trying to avoid social media (my whole TikT ok feed is babies and pregnancy announcements), but everytime I call a friend, my parents, a cousin, their first question is always ‘OMG are you pregnant?’. And every time, I have to smile politely and say ‘No, not yet.’

So now I’m hyper-fixating on reading, book clubs, cleaning, cooking and work. But that tiny voice in the back of my head is always wondering W h at d a y of our c y cl e ar e w e i n? So, let’s talk pre-pregnancy habits instead. Over the past few years, I have been building as much muscle as possible. Coming from a past filled with emotional-eating habits, unhealthy processed foods, and a horrible relationship with the scale, it was a tough journey, to say the least. The first two years felt like I had made no progress. Only the past year really felt like I was getting anywhere.

I’ve still got lots of goals to hit, but I think I have finally reached a point where I can take out most of the emotion behind building a healthy body for myself and baby. I’ve also started taking pre-natal vitamins and supplements over the past month and a half. Due to prior health conditions, I’ve already been taking loads of supplements like creatine, vitamin D, iron, magnesium and fish oil. Thankfully, these were all recommended to me as pre-natals as well.

In addition, I’ve been taking folic acid and vitamin C. It was always difficult for me to stick with taking pills daily (I always got the ick ), but strangely, knowing this is to help my future baby keeps me disciplined and motivated. I was never a huge coffee person, but I’ve significantly reduced caffeine intake (usually 1 coffee a week at most).

My next goal is to hit 10k steps a day. A typical day for me looks like waking up at 5am, having breakfast (I aim to get 20g of protein here), heading up to my condo gym for 45 minutes (20 minutes of weightlifting and 20 minutes of treadmill walking), then leaving for work around 6:45am. I usually return home around 3:30pm and have half an hour to decompress, lay down and have some me-time. My husband is usually home around 5:00 and I start cooking dinner around 4:30pm and we tend to eat by 6:00 or 6:30pm. We like to end the night with an episode of whatever show we are watching, and I’m usually in bed by 8:30 or 9:00pm. After all that, I average around 6000 steps a day. 

These are all habits I’ve tried to maintain consistent over the past year , especially now that we are trying for our first baby. What are some other tips you’ve been given or you’ve tried to get your body ready for pregnancy? Keeping in mind that everyone’s journey and circumstances are

different!

Fingers crossed for next week’s update, post-ovulation!

B.