When you know you’re ready for a baby, you probably want to know how to get pregnant fast. You might expect that getting pregnant will happen without your even trying. Go off contraception, have sex, and boom: pregnant!

Needless to say, it doesn’t always happen like that. Some couples conceive the first month, but for many couples, it takes much longer than that. This doesn’t necessarily mean there is anything wrong with you. The truth is, it’s just not as easy to get pregnant as you thought it was. For a young couple at the peak of their fertility with no underlying fertility issues, having well-timed sex during the fertile window, the chances of conceiving are about 25 percent per cycle. That means that even if you’re perfectly healthy and doing everything right, you’re never going to have better odds than one in four.

It’s important to go into this process knowing that you don’t have full control over how long it will take to get pregnant. That said, there are a few things you do have control over that can help increase the likelihood of getting pregnant quickly.