If you read this headline and thought, “What in the FRESH h*ll is fertility maxxing?” you’re not alone. An X user named Amanda had the same question. In the most basic terms, “fertility maxxing” refers to maximizing your fertility — but we have to go a little deeper into the history of the term to truly understand it.

Let’s start off by defining the suffix “-maxxing.” The suffix began popping up with the term “looksmaxxing,” a word that originated on misogynistic message boards. According to Dazed Digital, “Once confined to incel message boards, the meaning of its origin, looksmaxxing, is in the name: maximizing one’s appearance.”

The suffix has since been added to a variety of other words: “sleepmaxxing” if you’re changing your lifestyle to boost your sleep hygiene, “gymmaxxing” if you’re working out all the time, and “watermaxxing” if you’re doing everything you can to drink more water and boost your hydration.

So that brings us to “fertility maxxing.” One person on Threads described it as “a very weird thing I’ve seen popping up in the trade-off, alt right, Christian circles.” She continued to explain, “They’re eating raw beef testicles and ovaries and drinking raw milk to help them have like 10 kids on a homestead.”

According to Megha on X, fertility maxxing is popular among Gen Z. In a Tweet, she wrote, “If lululemon was smart they’d make a line of loose, cotton, breathable workout clothes that still look cute. Gen z is fertility maxxing. They’re no longer interested in restricting lymph flow with slave manufactured plastic body condoms for workout clothes.”

Much of the conversation seems to have been sparked by a video created by Cali, a 20-year-old content creator who wants to be a tradwife. She shared this video on her Instagram account (@christwithcali), where it got 1.7 million views:

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A post shared by Cali 🌻🐄👸🏼🐷 (@christwithcali)

According to many of the young women who are fertility maxxing, the method includes doing things like: sunning your genitals with an infrared chicken lamp, spending time in a sauna and ice bath, eating sardines and raw liver, refusing vaccines, drinking raw milk, and more. While some of these activities have fertility-boosting health benefits (like eating fatty fish and iron-rich foods), most are incredibly dangerous. For the record, sunning your genitals, avoiding vaccines, and drinking raw milk are not healthy decisions and could lead to serious issues.

The reasoning behind why these women are fertility maxxing is also cause for concern. For the most part, it has to do with the tradwife movement, fundamental Christianity, and a rejection of feminism. Many people who believe in fertility maxxing think it’s their God-given destiny to birth and raise as many children as possible. They often believe a woman’s role is to submit to her husband, stay home and take care of all the domestic tasks, and commit to living biblically.

Another woman on X, Kai said, “I don’t like it for the reasons I’m seeing in it on social media, but there are legitimate benefits to some of these foods for those of us with actual fertility issues (I don’t have one of my ovaries anymore).”

Kai has a point: There are actual benefits to making some health and lifestyle adjustments when you’re trying to get pregnant (or want to address underlying fertility issues).

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A post shared by WARKITCHEN (@thewarkitchen)

According to the Mayo Clinic, there are a few things you can do to increase your fertility:

• Maintain a healthy weight (being too underweight or too overweight can negatively affect your menstrual cycle)
• Prevent sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
• Prioritize sleep (try to be awake during the day and asleep at night, otherwise you may experience hormone level issues)
• Don’t smoke or use other tobacco products
• Limit/avoid alcohol
• Limit caffeine
• Focus on moderate exercise (exercising too much or too hard can affect ovulation)
• Avoid toxins like pesticides, lead, and dry-cleaning solvents

So, if you’re trying to conceive, should you be fertility maxxing?

The short answer is no. If you want to focus on improving your fertility, that’s totally fair — but fertility maxxing is an extreme method that is often based on pseudoscience and right-wing ideals.

The post WTF Is ‘Fertility Maxxing’? Why It’s Gaining Attention Among People Trying to Get Pregnant appeared first on Mom.com.

Byline: Bryce Miller, The San Diego Union-Tribune, (TNS)

SAN DIEGO — The process would break most — mentally and emotionally if not financially. For some, becoming parents demands more than seems possible. For some, hunting for the joy of bringing a life into the world is a road littered with pain and sorrow.

Long odds. Demoralizing setbacks. Staggering bills.

When Olympic gold-medal-winning bobsledder Kaillie Humphries and husband Travis Armbruster began chasing a dream beyond their storied athletic careers, the universe turned cruel.

Humphries was diagnosed with endometriosis, a genetic condition that can cause the tissue that lines the inside of the uterus to grow outside it. There can be incredible pain and, in the case of half the women who experience it, fertility can be impaired.

It can be crushing news, sending couples like them down the path of expensive in vitro fertilization with no guarantee of success.

“I definitely had times when I doubted it if ever was going to happen,” said Humphries, a San Diego resident. “Then there were times I wouldn’t question it, because we knew we were never going to give up until it did.”

The first, second, and third egg implantations failed.

“You get to a point, maybe it’s not meant for us,” said Humphries, who won her third gold for the United States in the 2022 Beijing Games after an ugly split with Team Canada that revolved around coaching.

“We’re going to put everything — our hearts, souls, finances, energy, love — into it and it might not work. The fear creeps in. OK, what if it doesn’t happen? But I always believed it could and knew we would exhaust every resource possible,” she said.

That they did.

The couple invested more than $50,000 for a fingers-crossed shot at parenthood. The money was more than twice the annual stipend Humphries received as a member of Team USA.

On June 14, a son named Aulden was born at Sharp Mary Birch Hospital.

“We’re going to tell him his college fun was what got him into this world,” said Armbruster, a former member of the USA Bobsled team who won a four-man gold medal at the Americas Cup in Lake Placid, New York. “He better be very smart or good at sports.”

Welcoming a son became the ultimate accomplishment in lives filled with athletic ones. There had been so much disappointment, so many dark thoughts on quiet nights.

The baby was not the only one crying in the delivery room.

“Definitely not,” said Humphries, who will turn 39 in September and felt the stress of the ticking clock. “He probably cried the least out of everybody.”

The arrival of Aulden followed a complicated and grueling 36 hours of labor. Humphries said doctors were on the verge of conducting a C-section at least 10 times, including when the baby’s heart rate dropped.

Aulden kept bouncing back. Spunky, like his mom.

“I said, whatever you need to do to get the baby into the world safely,” she said. “When he was born, it was the biggest relief humanly possible. It’s been a journey, years in the making.

“If there’s anything sport has taught me, when the pressure gets high, keep everything simple and take it step by step.”

As strange as it might seem to ask a multi-time Olympic gold medalist if something else is the biggest victory of a lifetime, Humphries said it’s a no-brainer.

Sports can be fleeting. Becoming a parent, especially with so many things stacked against that, soars far beyond the medal stand.

“One-hundred percent,” Humphries said. “You honestly can’t compare it. Both required work, sacrifice, teamwork, and family support.

The mental fortitude, it had to be used in different ways going through this.

“There’s commonalities when you get to that finish line, the sense of accomplishment, the emotions. But being a mom and a parent, it’s not even close,” she said.

There’s a different type of wiring in world-class athletes. Never-quit DNA. Teflon resolve.

Rarely, though, is it tested so fiercely.

“That was the big surprise, how emotional that specific moment was,” Armbruster said. “We had been planning, talking, and imaging for years, but it was all imaginary until that moment.”

Humphries also juggled the dilemma facing so many top-flight women’s athletes. Do you hit pause during your best athletic years to start a family while still young enough to pull it off? How do athletes in sports where winning and losing is decided by thousandths of a second balance those lives?

Superstars like Jennie Finch, Allyson Felix, Serena Williams, and Alex Morgan helped to light the torch.

Humphries will make a run at one more Olympics, targeting the 2026 games in Milan and Cortina, Italy. She earned a bye onto the national team based on her past finishes.

First, she’ll work at getting into shape. That will ramp up from December through March, leading into the world championships at Lake Placid.

“I don’t know how my body is going to react going into training,” she said.

Don’t bet against her. After all, she’s faced tougher odds.

©2024 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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As the reproductive world reels from the recent ruling in Alabama establishing embryos as "extrauterine children,” a new form of “reproductive woke” will impact thousands of people in their 20s. One in five couples struggle with infertility, and these numbers continue to rise. A combination of environmental issues brought on by the modern world, intertwined with the desire to find emotional and professional stability prior to starting a family, outweighs the reproductive gravitational pull. We will explore five reasons why women in their 20s may shift the reproductive paradigm and freeze eggs during their formative reproductive years.

More from Mom.com: How Much Does Freezing Your Eggs Cost?

The post How Freezing Your Eggs in Your 20s May Be the New Reproductive Revolution appeared first on Mom.com.

“You’re pregnant.” I waited six years to hear those words. I went through multiple egg retrievals, several rounds of IVF, and suffered through two miscarriages. Throughout that time I had people ask a lot of questions and say a lot of pretty inappropriate things that only made an already devastating journey that much harder.

I had some support, but honestly, most of the time I felt very alone, isolated in my pain. Those around me didn’t know what to do or what to say. It was no one’s fault. Trying to find words or gestures of support for someone in such a vulnerable place is hard.

But with one in six couples experiencing infertility according to the World Health Organization, chances are you know someone who's trying to become a parent. And with gift giving being one of the five universal love languages, it’s a supportive gesture for friends dealing with infertility.

After going through my own journey, I started InCircle Fertility. Now I work with hundreds of families experiencing infertility and can say firsthand that you can’t go wrong with any of the gifts below. These are six meaningful gifts for loved ones struggling with infertility.

One important note: If you want to give a gift but don’t know what to say when you give it, I strongly believe that honesty is the best policy. Something like, “I don’t know the right words or the perfect thing to get you that shows my support, but this felt good, and I thought you might love it too.”

The post 6 Thoughtful Gifts for Those Navigating Infertility Struggles appeared first on Mom.com.

The time has come, and you’ve decided you want to try to get pregnant. You know what all goes into doing the deed when it comes to achieving the desired outcome, but as far as timing is concerned, you’re not 100% sure. Did I wait too long? Am I still fertile, and if so, when is my body most likely to be cooperative?

There are many ways to determine what time is the best time. So if you’re looking for answers around fertility, like when are women the most fertile, what ovulation has to do with it all, and the best ways to track your ovulation — read on.

The post When Are Females Most Fertile? appeared first on Mom.com.

In the United States, 19% of people of childbearing age are unable to get pregnant after one year of trying. This can be a confusing, frustrating, and devastating time, especially when it seems as though everyone around you is getting pregnant or posting their baby bump photos online.

If you are trying to get pregnant to no avail or are struggling with infertility and your partner’s infertility has been ruled out, there are several types of fertility treatments available to assist you in growing your family.

The post What Are Different Types of Fertility Treatments? appeared first on Mom.com.

The time has come. You’re ready to expand your family and have a baby. But the problem is you’ve been having regular sex, and month after month, the pregnancy test keeps coming out negative. Even though you track your ovulation and have been following a healthy lifestyle, you still haven’t gotten pregnant.

By this time, the question of infertility has crossed your mind. If that is the case, don’t worry because you are not alone. In fact, in the United States, 10% to 15% of couples are infertile, according to the Mayo Clinic.

“The chance of getting pregnant, even for a young healthy couple, is not more than 20 percent, or one in five, every month,” Dr. Alan Copperman, M.D., director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York, told The New York Times.

To help you know if it’s infertility or something else, we'll cover the symptoms, what you can do, and different infertility treatments.

The post How Do I Know if I’m Infertile? appeared first on Mom.com.

Over the past five years, there has been a sharp rise in egg freezing. With more and more women in the media openly discussing their choice to freeze their eggs, it has allowed women to see how it is a viable option.

In 2018 the percentage of women freezing their eggs more than doubled, according to Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology’s recent study. This rise results from a variety of reasons, such as career ambitions, medical conditions, and a desire to wait for the right partner. Egg freezing, or oocyte cryopreservation, allows women to make more strategic life decisions.

Despite the rise in women completing this process, the cost to freeze eggs cannot be overlooked, so it is time for women to educate themselves and talk about the cost of this option.

The post How Much Does Freezing Your Eggs Cost? appeared first on Mom.com.

If you're among the 15% of couples who struggle with fertility issues and are trying to conceive, you may be contemplating expensive treatments. However, before you spend tons of money on testing and procedures to increase your chances of getting pregnant, you may want to first consider looking for less invasive ways to boost your fertility on your own.

Whether you're hoping to become pregnant right away or just want to know how to increase fertility naturally in the least invasive way possible, one of these natural fertility boosters could be just what you need to increase your chances of having a baby.

The post Natural Fertility Boosters appeared first on Mom.com.

It’s just about time for your period to begin. But instead of the intense cramps and heavy bleeding, you find just a spot or two of light pink blood on your underwear. This partnered with the tell-tale signs of nausea, fatigue, and frequent trips to the bathroom may have you wondering, is this my period or implantation bleeding?

During the very early days of your pregnancy, you may experience a very light, barely there bleeding called implantation bleeding. You’ll know the difference between this type of bleeding and your regular period because it is significantly lighter in flow and color, and it lasts only a couple of days, as compared to the four to seven days a typical menstrual cycle lasts.

We’ll discuss what to expect if you take a pregnancy test during implantation bleeding, how accurate it will be, and when you should call your doctor.

The post Can You Take a Pregnancy Test During Implantation Bleeding? appeared first on Mom.com.