Getting Pregnant Naturally_ Healthy Choi - Winifred Conkling [3]
1993: Several grandmothers gave birth to their own grandchildren, using eggs provided by their daughters and sperm from their sons-in-law.
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Sex and Sexuality:
The Birds and the Bees for Grown-ups
Timing is everything—at least when it comes to getting pregnant. To conceive a child, you and your partner must have intercourse within a very narrow window of time. An egg is fertile for only six to twenty-four hours after ovulation; after that time it begins to disintegrate. Understanding your reproductive system and how it works can help you time intercourse to maximize your chances of conceiving each month.
While the mechanics of intercourse may seem self-evident, certain practical issues can affect your fertility. Your creativity in the bedroom (or wherever) can increase—or decrease—your odds of conception. In other words, it’s not just what you do, but how you do it. The following tips can help you get the timing down to a science—and help with some of the practical issues, too.
HERS
Get to Know Your Menstrual Cycle
As you know, to become pregnant you must have intercourse near the time of ovulation. The tough part, of course, is determining exactly when you ovulate. If you have been blessed with a consistent, predictable menstrual cycle, you can use the “calendar method.” This method involves keeping track of the length of your menstrual cycle, then calculating when you are most likely to release an egg. If all your hormones are in balance, you probably ovulate approximately fourteen days before the first day of your next menstrual period. That makes it relatively easy to make an educated guess of the approximate date of ovulation.
To estimate your date of ovulation, take the length of your cycle and subtract fourteen days. For example, if you have a twenty-eight-day cycle, you ovulate on day fourteen (twenty-eight minus fourteen). If you have a thirty-five-day cycle, you ovulate on day twenty-one (thirty-five minus fourteen), and if you have a twenty-one-day cycle, you ovulate on day seven (twenty-one minus fourteen).
Chart your menstrual cycle for three months to form a baseline or average length of your cycle. The typical cycle ranges from twenty-four to thirty-six days, so don’t get hung up on the “average” twenty-eight-day cycle.
Once you determine your approximate ovulation date, have intercourse every other day for five days before the target date and three days after. If you have intercourse every other day during this time, you will probably include your fertile time.
Monitor Your Cervical Mucus
Your cervical mucus doesn’t lie: Once you become acquainted with its changes in texture and volume throughout your menstrual cycle, you may become adept at reading this crucial fertility marker.
Your cervical mucus changes in response to fluctuations in the level of estrogen in your body. During the first half of your cycle, the egg matures within the ovarian follicle and the body releases increasing amounts of estrogen. This estrogen helps thicken the lining of the uterus, preparing it for implantation of the fertilized egg. The hormonal changes also create the fertile cervical mucus, which helps the sperm reach the uterus and Fallopian tubes. The fertile mucus provides a protective alkaline medium for the sperm to travel through the vagina. You want to have intercourse during the time the fertile mucus is present.
After the estrogen has peaked (at ovulation), the progesterone levels surge, prompting a change in the cervical mucus, often in as little as a couple of hours. At this point, your chances of conception have passed.
Fertile mucus is noticeably different from mucus at other phases of your menstrual cycle: It is slick, transparent, gelatinous, and stringy. It is stretchy; in fact, you can rub it between two fingers and stretch it for an inch or more (nonfertile mucus does not stretch).