Q. In most cases, how long should someone try to get pregnant before moving on to other steps or giving up?
A. The answer to this question depends on several things.
For women under age 35, the recommendation is usually to try for one full year before consulting a professional (infertility expert) about this. If you have been on some methods of birth control, such as Norplant or DepoProvera, you need to allow three to four months before you are fully fertile again - and then a year before you seek help.
If you have had fertility problems in the past and needed help getting pregnant, if you have a history of irregular or absent periods or polycystic ovary syndrome, or if you are over 35, you should seek help after six months of trying.
For most women, the keys are:
- knowing at what time in your cycle you are most likely to conceive and having sex several times around that time, and
- not getting totally overwrought, anxious, and focused on conceiving.
For most women, it will happen sometime during that year.
