When a couple tells me they are "trying," I usually ask them what that word means to them. Nine times out of ten, it means they have stopped using contraception and they are having sex and waiting. That's it. There's no conversation happening underneath it, no real looking-at-each-other. And I understand why — nobody teaches us that conception can be a decision made with our eyes open, rather than something we simply let happen.

So I want to slow this moment right down, because the weeks before a baby is even conceived hold more than we give them credit for.

Start with why you're doing this

Before anything practical, I ask couples to sit with their reason. Not the socially acceptable one — the real one. Are you trying because your parents are asking, because your friends are all having babies, because the marriage feels a bit flat and a baby seems like the next step? Or because the two of you love each other and genuinely want to bring a person into the world, someone you'll raise with care?

Your inner state while you're conceiving matters. I don't say this to add pressure — I say it because a child conceived out of longing and steadiness feels different, in the body and in the home, from one conceived out of obligation or fear. Do it for the right reasons, and let one of those reasons be love that has room to grow.

Do you want a baby, or do you want to be a parent?

This is the question that stops people in their tracks, and it should. Wanting a baby is easy. Babies are soft and they smell wonderful and everyone coos. Wanting to be a parent is something else entirely — it's wanting the 3am feeds, the loss of your old rhythm, the years of showing up whether you feel like it or not.

Once you can feel the difference between those two wants, you'll know which one you're standing in. And here's the tender truth: once a child arrives, they cannot go back. They will be in your life for a very long time, sometimes joyfully, sometimes with compromise and quiet resentment. But the child never asked to be here. So the readiness has to be ours to sort out, before they arrive, not theirs to carry.

Begin imagining the birth — your way

I encourage couples to start thinking about the birthing experience early, long before the third trimester. Not to decide everything, but to notice what they actually want rather than what the crowd is doing. Do you want a natural birth? Would a calm birthing centre feel right — softer light, less chaos, fewer machines humming? A woman's body holds enormous capacity, and she deserves to choose for herself rather than default into whatever everyone else did.

None of this replaces your doctor or midwife. Their guidance keeps you and your baby safe. What I'm pointing at is the emotional and somatic layer that sits alongside the medical one — the part that's yours to feel into.

The part nobody warns the man about

Fathers-to-be, this is for you. Your readiness matters through the whole pregnancy, but the hardest stretch is the one almost no one names: the fourth trimester, those first three months after birth.

I have watched too many relationships crack in that window — a crack that sometimes never fully heals. It rarely comes from the pregnancy itself. It comes from how alone a woman feels in those early weeks. How much support she is or isn't receiving while her body is raw, her sleep is gone, and her whole sense of self is rearranging.

So when we plan conception consciously, we're not just planning a pregnancy. We're planning who shows up, and how, in the months after. Ask yourselves that now, gently, while it's still a question and not yet a wound.

Conception isn't only a biological event. It's the first decision you make as this child's parents. Make it awake.