Preconception Care (PCC) is about taking care of your health in preparation for a pregnancy. It is a commonsense approach to ensuring both of you have done everything you can to have not only a baby, but a healthy one.

Good health and health care before you become pregnant – also known as preconception care – will help support a healthy reproductive system and a normal conception.

It is now widely accepted that lifestyle factors impact significantly on fertility. These include the effects of age, illness, medications, toxins, social drugs, poor nutrition, and weight problems. Many women do not find out they are pregnant until several weeks after conception. Those early weeks are key for the baby. Some medicines, illnesses, toxins or bad habits (such as smoking and drinking alcohol) can affect your baby before you know you are pregnant. To be safe, experts say you should act like you are pregnant if you are trying to get pregnant.

As couples prepare for pregnancy, it is easy to focus only on the woman’s health. However issues of fertility do not rest solely on the female. There are several healthy habits men need to have during these critical months of preparation too. Adopting healthy lifestyle practices may improve men’s chances of conceiving a child. Male factors contribute to between 30 and 50% of all infertility cases.

Women are born with all their eggs, which are stored in an immature state in the ovaries. A group of eggs begin developing and maturing 3 months prior to an ovulation. As a result, this group is affected by nutritional deficiencies, illness and toxin exposure for approximately 100 days leading up to ovulation.

Sperm take on average 72 days to develop, mature, be stored and finally ejaculated. Sperm development occurs in 16 day cycles, needing approximately 5 cycles to produce one sperm. Because of this 3-month development period, illness or poor health, toxic exposure and nutritional deficits that were present 2 months ago may affect today’s ejaculation, regardless of a man's health today.

So you can see that the 3-4 months prior to a conception have an immense effect on a) the likelihood of a conception and b) the viability and health of the conception. This is good reason for practicing preconception care.