I often have people write to me and ask how they can best prepare their bodies to not only conceive, but also to conceive a baby boy. Preparing your body for conception and preparing your body for one gender or the other are two completely different things. If you want to choose the gender of your baby, there are a few more steps to consider, which I will discuss in the next article.

General preparation for conception: First, I’m going to discuss some general things you’ll want to do to prepare yourself for trying to conceive. These apply no matter what gender you want. First, if you are taking birth control pills, it should be given three months before you start trying to get pregnant. The same is true for any medication that adversely affects the fetus or impairs its ability to conceive. Some medicines require you to touch them before coming off completely. Work closely with your medical professional on the best way to do this.

Second, you’ll want to stop going on diets or rigorous food or exercise plans. Studies show that women need normal amounts of calories and fat stores to have the best chance of conceiving. So you just want to make sure your eating or exercise plan isn’t too restrictive. Studies show that women who conceive children conceive slightly more calories per day, often including breakfast as part of the calories.

Preparing your body for the conception of a child: Before going into details, I first want to explain the characteristics of the boy who produces sperm. These are the little ones you are supporting in the race to the egg. On a positive note, these little ones (more specifically the Y chromosomes) are faster than their female counterparts and this can be an advantage, but they are also the most vulnerable to problems like weather and acidity, which can be a disadvantage. To give them the best chance of winning the race, you will need to go more alkaline and conceive late in the game.

The first thing I would do is get PH test strips. This will tell you if your vaginal environment is a friend or foe to the Y sperm. If you are acidic, you will need to change this because this will not be a great setting for Y’s who want to not only survive, but thrive. You can make your PH lower (which means becoming more alkaline) through your diet (eating low PH, low acid foods) and/or by showering with ingredients based on how acidic you really are. You will need to keep evaluating yourself to see how you are progressing and know when your PH is low enough.

Another thing to consider is time. Because Y’s are so vulnerable, you can’t ask them to wait for the egg. If they try this, many of them will die. You actually want the egg to have to wait for them. To achieve this, you’ll want to conceive after you ovulate (the day of or a day after). Find a very precise method to calculate this. I don’t like to leave anything to chance here, so I often recommend using a predictor that measures bodily fluids, with urine and saliva being the most popular. (I actually prefer saliva because it gives you more flexibility as to when you can test.)

The next variable also involves your partner. For the conception of a boy, you have to make sure that you have an orgasm as those bodily fluids are alkaline. And you want to achieve deep penetration because distance isn’t that friendly to Ys either.