Does anything I actually DO in the two week wait make a difference? Bed rest, pineapple core, hot baths, lifting the shopping

Transfer was Sunday. I have been horizontal for approximately 48 hours and I am starting to wonder if I have invented a religion.

Here is the list I have accumulated from various corners of the internet in three days: bed rest for at least 48 hours, no hot baths, no lifting anything heavier than a kettle, keep your feet warm, eat the core of a pineapple (specifically the core, apparently the rest of the pineapple is useless), no caffeine, no exercise, no orgasms, no stress, which is my favourite one because how.

What I would like to know from people who have done more of these than me is which of these, if any, actually does anything. Not what makes you feel better, although I will take that too. I mean does any of it change whether the embryo stays. Because right now I am lying very still and being frightened of a laundry basket, and if that is pointless I would quite like my fortnight back.

Get up. Genuinely. Get up and put the kettle on.

Four cycles in and the only one where I did strict bed rest was the one where I lost my mind by day four and, for what it is worth, it did not work. The one that did work, I was back at my desk on the Tuesday and carried a very heavy suitcase up some stairs on the Friday because I forgot I was supposed to be being careful. An embryo is not a marble balanced on a shelf. It is not going to fall out because you emptied the dishwasher.

The pineapple core thing I gave up on when I did the maths on how much bromelain you would actually have to eat. Mostly it made my mouth hurt.

I did the pineapple. I did the warm socks. I did a truly ridiculous thing involving keeping my feet off cold floors for a fortnight.

I want to be honest about why, because I do not think it was because I believed in it. It was because two weeks is a very long time to hold still in your own head and those little rituals gave me something to hold. If a bit of pineapple gets you to Thursday, eat the pineapple. My only rule was that nothing on my list was allowed to hurt me or cost real money, and nothing was allowed to become a stick I could beat myself with afterwards if it went wrong. That last one is the important one.

Jo, the short answer is the one gemma gave you: normal daily activity does not reduce the chance of an embryo implanting, and strict bed rest is not recommended. If anything, prolonged immobility has its own downsides. So please do get up.

A bit more detail, because the list you have collected is a mix of three different things. Some of it is genuine clinic instruction: keep taking your progesterone exactly as prescribed, take any other medication you have been given, and follow whatever your own unit told you at transfer. That part matters and is not folklore. Some of it is sensible general advice that would apply to anyone hoping to be pregnant: not smoking, keeping alcohol out of it, and being sensible about caffeine, all of which is reasonable and none of which is about this specific fortnight. And a large part of it, bed rest, pineapple core, warm feet, avoiding a moderately heavy shopping bag, has no good evidence behind it at all.

On the specific ones you listed: very hot baths, saunas and hot tubs are worth avoiding, mostly on general early-pregnancy grounds rather than because of anything peculiar to a transfer. Exercise you already do is fine; a brand new punishing regime started this week is not the moment. Sex is a question for your own clinic, because advice varies with what your unit does and, for example, whether you had a lot of follicles and any concern about OHSS, so ask them rather than the internet. And stress: the honest position is that the everyday stress of this fortnight is not what determines your result, which is worth knowing because "relax and it will happen" is both untrue and unkind.

The things I would actually ask you to act on are the boring ones. Take the medication. Do not test early, wait for the date your clinic set. And if you get severe abdominal pain or swelling, breathlessness, or heavy bleeding, that is a phone-the-clinic situation the same day, not a wait-and-see one. Our guide to the two-week wait covers the rest.

From the other chair: my wife did the strict version on cycle one and the normal-life version on cycle two, and the second fortnight was survivable for both of us in a way the first was not. Not a data point about implantation. A data point about morale.

Right. Got up. Went for a walk. Felt weirdly guilty for about an hour and then felt enormously better.

Have kept the warm socks because I like them and Mrs Okafor has given me permission. Have retired the pineapple. Nine days to go.

Closing the loop for anyone finding this later. Negative on test day.

I am sad and I am also, in a strange way, glad I spent the fortnight walking about instead of lying in a dark room, because there is not a single thing on that list I am now torturing myself about. That is not nothing. Whoever is reading this on day three with a pineapple: put it down, go outside, and be kind to yourself.