Vacations for getting pregnant -- what a concept

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Oct 9, 2006 | by Candace Murphy, STAFF WRITER

PATRICIA GATZ had the weekend all planned out.

The luggage was in the trunk. The hotel reservations were at the Mark Hopkins. The babysitter was in cahoots. And most important, the time of the month was precisely right.

So when Gatz, her husband and her two kids were taking a stroll at the Ferry Building Farmers Market and conveniently "bumped into" the family's sitter, it was time for the magic to begin. So after a sunset drink at the Top of the Mark, then room service, then in- room movies, then, ... well, ... nine months later, their third child, a boy, was born.

"I'd been following my fertility and knew that we would have a good chance of conceiving on a particular weekend," says Gatz, who at the time lived in Oakland but has since moved to Piedmont. "Our son was born nine months later and will be 2 in November."

Though Gatz didn't know it at the time, she was pretty much a trailblazer in the world of fertility. Because now, Gatz's weekend getaway has a name: A conceptionmoon. A cousin of the honeymoon, the conceptionmoon is a stress-relieving vacation planned around a woman's ovulation cycle and taken with the intent of conceiving.

They're popular, too, according to BabyCenter.com, a San Francisco-based Web site devoted to all things pregnancy, pre- pregnancy and post-pregnancy. Noticing chatter on its bulletin boards between members recommending taking a vacation as a good way to ease the stress that can go with conception difficulties, the Web site decided to do a survey to see just how popular they were.

The survey of 1,052 BabyCenter.com visitors in August -- an offer to participate in a survey about issues related to conception rolled across the screen while online users were in either the pregnancy or baby areas of the site -- revealed that 76 percent of respondents had taken a conceptionmoon to become pregnant, and that 4 out of 10 couples were successful.

Additionally, 94 percent of respondents reported theirconceptionmoon lowered their stress levels significantly. Though its exact role in conception is not known, stress is believed to possibly decrease fertility.

"We wanted to see if this was a conscious choice being made by women trying to get pregnant," says BabyCenter editor-in-chief Linda Murray.

Statistically, and anecdotally, BabyCenter's findings pan out. Mandi Moran and her husband, a couple in their early 30s from Schenectady, N.Y., went on a cruise to Mexico to jointly celebrate their 10-year wedding anniversary and to try to conceive a second child. That was 13 months ago; the Morans now are a family of four.

Dacia and Robert Boehning of Stroudsburg, Pa., also decided to go on a conceptionmoon after two years of trying to become pregnant. They scheduled a camping trip at Spruce Run in Clinton, N.J., as a last-ditch effort to conceive. If it didn't work, the couple vowed to finally visit a reproductive endocrinologist. Or, in other words, an infertility doctor.

"In that whole two years we were trying, we hadn't been on one vacation," says Dacia Boehning, 34, who has three children, ages 16, 15 and 10, from a previous marriage.

The two attribute their success not only to the good fortune of reserving a camping spot during the same week that Dacia was ovulating, but to removing the stress from their harried lives.

"Circumstances just prevented us from getting away, from unplugging from everything," adds Robert Boehning, 40. "It helped to make that disconnect. It's tough to look back and say, 'Did we make any time for ourselves while we were trying?' Because the answer is no."

Still, some parents are skeptical of the whole idea of a conceptionmoon and fear the hype and marketing -- imagine the hotel package possibilities, and one can only wonder if they'd include SpectraVision -- may put too much pressure on a vacation whose very idea is to relieve stress.

"I think conceptionmoons would only add more stress to life," says Cindy Gunderson, a stay-at-home mother from Berkeley. "If you build up the event of getting pregnant in your mind and then it doesn't happen when you want, it would be devastating. I know when we were trying to get pregnant, every month that it didn't happen was really disappointing, and that was without having such intense pressure put on it."

Worse can be the fact that fertility, and infertility, can be complicated issues needing more than a Band-Aid like a vacation. Any couple who's tried to conceive longer than the magic year, regardless of the stress in their lives, can attest to that.

"It took us three years to have our first child, and in that three years, the most frequent advice we got was 'to relax' and 'to take a vacation,'" says Tracie Romo, a suburban East Bay mother. "Everyone said it'll happen when we just let go and have fun. Well, of course it did, but letting go and having fun while trying so hard to do something most people accomplish without a thought isn't that easy. So did we vacation and did we conceive on the vacation? No, and no."

BabyCenter's Murray, admits that a conceptionmoon isn't a guaranteed method of conceiving, but says she and her coworkers were interested in the phenomenon and that it can be a successful tool for some couples.