10 bizarre things women do to get pregnant
For as difficult as it seems for most of our lives NOT to get pregnant, when we finally decide it's time, it's often surprising just how challenging getting knocked up can be. When it doesn't happen right away, many of us start getting desperate and will try almost anything to get that baby of our dreams. Just how far will we go?
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Pretty darn far, according to Lori Green LeRoy, author of The Inadequate Conception -- From Barry White to Blastocytes: What Your Mom Didn't Tell You About Getting Pregnant. In it, LeRoy gives a raw, honest, and even humorous account of her own tales of trying to get pregnant as well as those she's heard from other women. Here she shares 10 of the strangest things women do to get pregnant -- some of which she cautions are likely medically inappropriate:
1. The gravity method: Putting your rear end up on a pillow, putting your legs over your head, or standing on your head post-coitus.
2. Invoking your fertility god of choice: Lots of options here ranging from St. Gerard, the Catholic Patron Saint of Motherhood (not sure why it's a man), to Kokopelli, the Native American fertility deity, to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of fertility, to Aditi, the Hindu goddess of fertility.
3. Feng shui: Putting a ceramic elephant on either side of the bedroom door; another suggestion is to place dragon statues in the bedroom next to the man's side of the bed so that some oomph is added to his sperm.
4. Spoonful of syrup: Downing a teaspoon of cough syrup every day for a week before ovulation thins out cervical mucus and makes it easier for the sperm to swim their way to the egg.
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5. Sipping sludge: Drinking one teaspoon of 100 percent Grade B maple syrup (Aunt Jemima's apparently isn't good enough) and one teaspoon of 100 percent cocoa powder mixed in a cup of coffee first thing after waking ... for two to three months (at least according to the woman who worked at the health food store. And yes, it tastes like the bottom of the Mississippi River).
6. The use of technology: HormonalForecaster.com, which claims it "uses unique algorithms and patent pending technology to shade fertility charts to predict ovulation and indicate fertility." Other software programs include Cycle Watch and Ovulation-Predict, but there are dozens of them.
7. Counting on crystals: For the earth goddesses among us, placing crystals like rose quartz, moss agate, carnelian, garnet, and smoky quartz on your uterus, ovaries, thighs, and the center of your pubic bone is said to enhance fertility.
8. Hungarian mineral baths: In Budapest, there are healing mineral waters flowing underground. They are said to soothe arthritis and even help fertility. I tried that bad boy out -- just had to stomach a bunch of hairy women (myself included), a rotten-egg sulfuric smell, and lukewarm, yellowish water.
9. Steaming the hooha method: Chai-yok, or a vaginal steam bath. Fourteen different herbs are seeped like tea, and the daring woman sits on a stool with an opening so that the steam can penetrate the gynecologic regions and increase fertility.
10. Traditional Chinese medicine: A TCM specialist swears by taking Wu Ling Zhi, which is the fecal matter of a flying squirrel; yes, popping pills of flying squirrel poo!
What strange things have you done to try to conceive?
Image via Esparta/Flickr
Written by Julie Ryan Evans for CafeMom's blog, The Stir.
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