How to make baby

How to make a baby: The quick & dirty guide to getting pregnant

Love this journey for you.

By Diana Spalding, CNM Updated August 2, 2022

Witthaya Prasongsin/Getty Images

A version of this story was originally posted on January 16, 2020. It has been updated.

Making the decision to have a baby is a monumental moment. And if you’re there, let me be the first to say that I’m so excited for you and everything to come on your conception and parenthood journey.

I also want to acknowledge that while this is exciting, trying to get pregnant can feel stressful—especially if you are hoping to get pregnant quickly.

Once you make the decision, suddenly it seems like all you can think about is getting pregnant. So as you learn about how to conceive, and as you move through this chapter of your life, do what you can to be gentle with yourself, practice self-care and remember how vitally important you are. (Your future baby would agree).

In addition to taking good care of yourself, you probably have a ton of questions about how to get pregnant.

Digital classes from Motherly

Digital classes from Motherly

Pregnancy wellness

How to take the very best care of your changing self through this amazing transformation.

Before we dive into exactly how conception works, remember that your healthcare provider should always be your go-to for questions specific to you and your situation.

How long should you try to conceive before seeking reproductive assistance?

Here’s our quick & dirty guide on how to make a baby

1. Get prepared for getting pregnant

If you have the opportunity to spend a few months focusing on your well-being before trying to get pregnant, it can be helpful. Here are a few ways to prep for pregnancy:

Ritual

Essential Prenatal

Ritual’s prenatal is built on an “everything you need, nothing you don’t” philosophy. Each of the delayed-release capsules are easy to absorb and contain just 12 essential nutrients including methylated B vitamins, bioavailable iron and 350 mg of DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid that’s necessary for fetal brain and eye development. And since the best vitamins are the ones you’ll actually want to take, these come with a clever citrus tab inside the bottle to make the whole experience even better.

Read more about it here.

2. Decide: Will you wing it—or plan it?

If you decide to have a conception plan, then understanding your cycle is key.

3. Understand your menstrual cycle

Your fertile window is likely five to six days long, typically in the middle of your cycle.

On average, those with a 28-day cycle will ovulate on day 14. But charting your cycle is key to identifying your unique fertile days. In fact, just basing your conception attempts on a calendar can risk you missing your actual fertile days—your body will often show you that you are ovulating through specific signs of ovulation.

Once an egg is released from your ovary, it will survive for 12 to 24 hours. That means that it must meet the sperm within that window in order for it to become fertilized. The good news is that healthy sperm survives in your body for up to five days.

This is why knowing when you ovulate is so important.

4. Use apps and tests to identify your most fertile time

Adding in apps and tests to help you identify your most fertile time can be really helpful. As I share in The Motherly Guide to Becoming Mama, «Some providers don’t recommend using ovulation predictor kits right away because they worry that we might become too reliant on the (not-foolproof) technology. If you miss the subtle physical body signs described above, you might miss your window of fertility.» Ultimately, you get to be the boss here and choose the method that works best for you.

If you decide to incorporate fertility apps and tests into your getting pregnant plant, here are a few to try:

5. Read your body’s signs of ovulation

Here are the physical signs of ovulation to pay attention to:

The Motherly Guide to Becoming Mama

This is the pregnancy book we wish we’d had when we first…

How to Make a Baby Sling

This article was co-authored by Daniela Gutierrez-Diaz and by wikiHow staff writer, Amy Bobinger. Daniela Gutierrez-Diaz is a professional pattern maker and clothing designer at DGpatterns in Vancouver, Canada. With over 5 years of experience, Daniela creates modern and unique silhouettes that are suitable for a busy everyday life. Her blog, On the Cutting Floor, contains sewing tips and PDF sewing patterns for a variety of projects and designs.

There are 14 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page.

This article has been viewed 203,444 times.

It can be really hard to be productive when you’re carrying around your baby all day. That’s where a baby sling comes in! Wearing your baby can help free up your hands, allowing you to keep your baby close while still getting a few things done. There are plenty of commercial baby slings on the market, but making your own baby sling lets you save a little money and personalize your baby’s carrier at the same time. We’re here to answer your questions so you can make this project a reality!

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How to Make a Baby

a short educational film

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License.

Find the film on Vimeo, YouTube, or IMDB.

Read some press about the film.

Follow the film on its blog.

See it on the big screen at a film festival near you.

How To Make a «How to Make a Baby»

some notes on how we did this

We made this video using a technique called «pixilation», which is a fancy term for stop-motion animation done with real people instead of puppets. We shot it, frame by frame, with Raquel’s Canon DSLR over a period of nine months. Those of you who stopped by our house might have noticed some mysterious tape marks on the floor in the living room. Those were for the camera tripod and our feet.

Animating over such a long period of time, using an increasingly pregnant woman as one of your puppets, means basically throwing out everything you might normally do in an animated film. For example, early on, we had this idea that we should wear the same clothes every time, for continuity’s sake. But as Raquel’s pregnancy developed, we soon discovered that the extra effort required to change in and out of our uniforms was going to interfere with the goal of shooting as many frames as possible, and might even prevent us from finishing the project at all. We dialed down the perfectionism, and in the process ended up having a lot more fun with it.

What emerged was a style you might call WYGIWYG: What You Get Is What You Get. Instead of forcing ourselves onto a brutal daily schedule, we simply shot whenever we felt like it, which ended up being about three or four times a month. And instead of planning ahead very carefully, we just improvised each night, based on a loose idea in my head that the breaths would require more and more effort each time. Rather than try to get a single frame exactly right, we’d shoot several frames of «coverage», with both of us in various positions. My hope was that the random uncontrollable variations in posture, clothing, etc. would kind of cancel each other out in the end.

This scattershot approach turned out to have a nice side effect: the 360 or so frames of raw footage had hundreds of possible interpretations, depending on how you shuffled the frames. So «animating» became a matter of choosing which frame would follow which, and for how long. I did this part mostly in After Effects.

The raw footage was really messy. A lot can happen in nine months’ time. The tripod got knocked out of place. Plants, lights, books and curtains shifted around. Incandescent bulbs burned out and got replaced with compact fluorescents, with a totally different color spectrum. But I was able to correct for most of that using AE’s motion tracking and color stabilization tools. It still ain’t perfect, but again, perfection was not the goal here, I just wanted it to be stable enough not to distract from the main action.

All of the images you see were captured in-camera. There were no synthetic elements. But I did «cheat» a little on two things: the curtain in the background is a separate layer, as is the bookshelf on the left. (They were just too distracting in the raw footage, so I animated and stabilized them, respectively.) The «explosion» effect is actually a birth ball, again added as a separate layer, partly to hide some weird shadows left behind when I split the frame in half to get the timing right on both me and Raquel.

For the audio, I played some little ditties in Garage Band, and recorded foley and «dialog» with a little voice recorder and battery powered mike. Our recording booth was the closet in the baby’s room. I feel pretty lucky: I don’t think there are a lot of voice actors who will stand in a tiny closet and let you tickle them. Although I could be wrong about that. I also got a bunch of terrific Creative Commons licensed audio samples from freesound.org. Here are direct links to the original samples:

To lay the samples down onto the video, I used iMovie, which my friend Lorelei describes pejoratively as «editing with a big crayon». But a big crayon turned out to be exactly the right tool for this project, because when you’re using crayons you can’t get too persnickety with the details. And so instead of spending aeons in post-production, after a couple of days I could just step back and say «Done.»

How to Make Baby Food

This article was co-authored by Monica Moreno, MS, RD, LD/N. Monica Moreno is a Registered Dietitian and the Founder, Owner, and Lead Dietitian at Essence Nutrition in Miami, Florida. Monica specializes in nutrition consulting and school and corporate wellness programs. She holds a BA from The University of Florida and an MS in Dietetics and Nutrition from Florida International University. Monica was the dietitian for the Miami Marlins for close to 5 years, and she is currently visiting dietitian specialist at Ocean Reef Resort and Club. Monica is a member of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Nutrition Entrepreneurs Dietetics Practice Group, Integrative Nutrition Dietetics Practice Group, Collegiate and Professionals Sports Dietitians Association, and Weight Management Dietetic Practice Group. She was awarded the 2020 Coral Gables Chamber of Commerce Business Woman in Healthcare of the Year award.

This article has been viewed 86,962 times.

If you want to be in complete control of what your baby eats, making baby food instead of buying it is an excellent choice. Food that comes in a jar or pouch is often highly processed and combined with sodium and sugars—plus it’s more expensive. When you make baby food at home, you can choose your baby’s favorite fruits, vegetables and meats, steam and puree them using a food processor, and freeze them in convenient portions. If nothing but the most nutritious, delicious food will do for your baby, nothing beats making it yourself.

How to Make Homemade Baby Rice Cereal

Using only 1 ingredient, this Homemade Baby Rice Cereal is a simple and easy recipe to make for your baby! Plus, it is completely freezer-friendly, so it’s a great addition to your freezer stash of baby purees. It’s great for babies 4-6+ months and up as a Stage 1 baby food.

Medically reviewed by Jamie Johnson, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN), and Lauren Braaten, Pediatric Occupational Therapist (OT).

Homemade Baby Rice Cereal

Homemade brown rice baby cereal is packed with manganese, magnesium, and selenium. It is a good source of fiber, protein, and a ton of other essential vitamins and minerals for a growing baby. 💪

It’s a nutritious first food for your baby, and you can easily mix it with other fruit or veggie purees for a more wholesome and delicious meal! 😋

Plus, this homemade baby cereal is one of the easiest purees you can make for your baby! All you need is 1 ingredient and less than an hour of your time 🕐.

For this recipe, we will cook the brown rice, blend it up, and then pop it into the freezer for easy-to-grab cubes of baby rice cereal. I have found that this cooking method makes the creamiest and smoothest baby cereal you can ever imagine. Besides, there is nothing like having a freezer stash of healthy baby purees at your fingertips!

Is it your first time making homemade baby food? Then I suggest you start this journey by reading my in-depth Guide on How to Make Homemade Baby Food. The detailed guide goes over all the important information such as the best cooking tools to have on hand, safe storage, how to know when baby is ready for solids, how to introduce purees, the best first foods for baby, and more! You can also check out my best-selling cookbook for even more information and recipes!

Rice Cereal Video

Watch this video to see how easy making your own homemade rice cereal can be!

Reasons to Love this Rice Baby Cereal

Related

Ingredients

Make sure to read the recipe card below for the full ingredient list and instructions!

TIME-SAVING TIP: If you are in a rush, you can use quick-cooked brown rice (I like the organic brown basmati rice from Trader-Joes) that only takes 20 minutes to cook!

Related

Soaking the Rice

Soaking brown rice (or any grain) helps remove some of the naturally occurring phytic acids, which are some of the hard-to-digest components of the grain. Getting rid of these acids speeds up the cooking time and makes the rice easier to digest.

If you are introducing grains as your baby’s first food, soaking the grains would be helpful as your baby would have an easier time digesting the puree.

But if thinking 2-8 hours ahead of time is holding you back from making your own cereal, then feel free to skip this step.

How to Soak Rice: Place 1 cup of rice in a medium bowl and add 2-3 cups of hot water (enough to cover the rice) and leave at room temperature for at least 2 hours. You can also leave it overnight. Drain the rice and rinse well. Follow the recipe below on cooking and pureeing instructions, but note that the rice will cook faster, so check the rice after 20 minutes.

How to Make Baby Rice Cereal

Tools Needed

Related

Other Cooking Methods

I have found that cooking the rice first and then blending, creates the smoothest rice cereal for your baby. But there are a couple of other ways to make rice cereal for your baby.

Instant Pot

You can cook small or large batches of white or brown rice in your instant pot. For white rice, you will put 1 cup of rice and 1 cup of water into the instant pot and cook for 3 minutes with a natural pressure release until the pin drops. For brown rice, you will put 1 cup of rice and 1 cup of water into the instant pot and cook for 24 minutes with a natural pressure release until the pin drops. Feel free to double the recipe if needed.

Rice Powder

Frequently Asked Questions

Babies can have rice cereal as one of their first foods. When a baby can start on solids is determined by their own rate of development, which generally comes between 4-6 months of age. Some of the developmental milestones babies need to reach in order to start solids include: if your baby has solid control of their head and neck, if your baby has doubled in weight, and if your baby is reaching for or opening their mouth when you eat (see my guide here). Before you start your baby on purees, you should consult with your pediatrician to make sure your child is developmentally ready.

Rice can 100% be your baby’s first food if you want it to be. It is recommended to wait to introduce the top eight allergen foods to your baby once a few other well-tolerated foods have been introduced, but otherwise, foods can be introduced in any order so choose whatever you are most excited for your baby to have.

No, rice is not a common allergen, however, as with any food, start with a small portion and be aware of any signs that might be an allergic reaction after introducing it.

Rice may cause constipation in babies since it absorbs water and may make it harder to pass stools. Switch to a different whole grain like oatmeal if your baby is having a hard time digesting rice.

How to Store Rice Cereal

This baby rice cereal is quick and effortless to freeze and reheat, making it convenient to have on hand. The frozen cubes are easy to grab and reheat right before mealtime.

How to Freeze

How to Re-Heat

Label Tip: Don’t forget to label your purees before you place them in the fridge or freezer with the name of the puree and date you made it. Take it from me, you will completely forget when and what is in your freezer by the end of the week;).

Rice Comination Purees

While Rice is great by itself, it’s also super easy to mix and match with other nutrient-dense baby food purees. Give these fun flavor combos a try!

Stage 1 Purees

Stage 2 Combination Purees

Related

Feeding Tips