How breathe ilo made my biggest wish come true - to be a mom!

I have been an overjoyed mom of a son for a year now and I would like to share my personal story of becoming a mother with you.

I have been married for four years. We met while we were still at school and it has always been clear to both of us that we would like to have a family with lots of children one day. Both of us grew up in large families and always appreciated that very much. In the first years of our relationship, the question of starting our own family didn’t come up. It was clear to us that trying for a baby would only become relevant after the age of 25.

 

I used hormonal contraception for years by taking the pill. While I was taking the pill, I had no apparent issues. During the past few years, I even took it continuously so that I wouldn’t bleed at all. This proved to be very comfortable. When I finally came off the pill three months after the wedding, I realized how beautiful life can be without taking hormones. Within a short period of time, I lost 5 kg and my skin cleared up.

After I came off the pill, I got my first period after about 6 weeks and from then on, it had a regular cycle of 28-31 days, however, I experienced severe period pain every cycle. To track my cycle, I regularly entered the data of my periods into a free cycle-tracking app. I figured it would be good to simply have an overview in a cycle calendar. The months went by and no pregnancy occurred. Slowly I became more and more nervous and impatient.

When I was young I was told that I should never forget to take the pill, because then I would basically be pregnant IMMEDIATELY. When you grow up with this conditioning, you start to wonder why you don’t get pregnant after a year of not taking the pill.

That’s why it was time for me to take a closer look at my fertility. I made an appointment with my doctor to share my increasingly intense wish for a baby. I found a great doctor who immediately responded to my concerns. Everything always looked good at my six-monthly checkup appointments. Follicles were forming on my ovaries, I was ovulating and also had a properly built-up uterine lining. Nevertheless, he sent me to the lab for a hormone check. The hormones can be easily determined by a blood draw. My husband was sent for a spermiogram. The results came in soon and apparently everything was fine with both of us.

Month after month passed and I became more impatient and sad. In the meantime, my friends seemed to get pregnant quite easily. I did a lot of research on the subject of fertility and actively participated in fertility forums. The exchange with like-minded people helped me enormously! Only then did I realize that I was not alone. So many women hope month after month that their biggest wish will finally come true.

Through many conversations and research, I kept coming across the breathe ilo fertility tracker. I started to research this new device of an Austrian start-up and now I am one of the company’s biggest fans! Not only did I gain new hope but the fertility tracker finally made my biggest wish – to be a mom – come true. Our son was one of the first breathe ilo babies and we are incredibly proud of that!

In case you haven’t heard about it before – breathe ilo is a device that uses a woman’s breath to determine her fertile window in real-time. Every day, I breathed into the device during my morning routine and the breathe ilo app on my phone showed me the status of my cycle and my fertility. So clever! Furthermore, I kept a cycle diary in the app. I entered symptoms such as the consistency of my cervical mucus, any experienced discomfort, headaches, abdominal pain.

During my extensive research on conception, I became increasingly aware of how important timing – figuring out the right time in the cycle – is in getting pregnant! breathe ilo is the perfect little helper for this because unlike taking your temperature, you don’t just learn that ovulation has taken place, but you’ll know in advance when ovulation is going to happen. During the first month, breathe ilo has to get to know your cycle. The fertility tracker gets better and more accurate with each cycle. For us, we were successful in the third cycle! Almost two years after coming off the pill and trying with no success, I was finally pregnant!!! I could hardly believe it when I saw the two lines on the pregnancy test!

The breathe ilo fertility tracker continued to be a part of my morning routine after giving birth and right now I’m just using it for tracking my cycle to keep track of things because our wish to have a big family got even bigger with our fabulous son and soon we’ll be using it to track my fertile window again!

Jasmin*, 29

*The name has been changed by the editors for privacy reasons.