JustMommies / Getting Pregnant / Boost Your Chances of Getting Pregnant

Best Time to Get Pregnant

Everyone knows that it takes a sperm and an egg joining to get pregnant. Most people know that women release just one egg a month and that men release millions of sperm with each ejaculation. What people can’t seem to agree on is the best time for that one egg to be fertilized by a man’s sperm.

Here’s what we know. During each menstrual cycle, women have about 6 days in which they can get pregnant. This is known as the fertile window. A woman’s fertile window includes the five days before ovulation and the day of ovulation. These six days are the only days in a woman’s cycle when she can conceivably get pregnant.

When is the best day to get pregnant?

The fertile window explained: A man’s sperm can live for up to five days inside a woman’s reproductive tract. A woman’s egg only lives for about 12 hours after it is released. This means that a woman’s egg needs to be fertilized within this 12-hour time frame. Furthermore, freshly ejaculated sperm are not able to fertilize a woman’s egg. It takes time for a process known as capacitation to occur. Capacitation is series of changes that sperm go through once they are inside a woman’s reproductive tract that make sperm more mobile and allow them to penetrate the egg. It can take up to 10 hours for a man’s sperm to complete the capacitation process and be able to fertilize a woman’s egg. This is why the five days before ovulation are so important. Once ovulation takes place, sperm have a very brief window of time to fertilize the egg. Having mature sperm (sperm that have gone through the capacitation process already) ready for the waiting egg is the key to successful conception.

The day of ovulation: You might have heard or might believe that the best day to get pregnant is the day that a woman ovulates. It is important to know when you ovulate and to try to time intercourse close to ovulation, but the day of ovulation is not the best day to get pregnant. Researchers have studied the timing of sexual intercourse in relationship to ovulation in order to determine which days are the most likely to result in pregnancy. Surprisingly, according to research published in the Journal of Reproductive Medicine, what they found was that the day of ovulation was not the best day of a woman’s cycle to conceive

The day before ovulation: Interestingly, the day before ovulation is actually a better day to conceive on than the day of. This may be because sperm that are ejaculated the day before ovulation have had time to mature and reach the egg.

Two days before ovulation: Even more interesting, researchers have found that a woman’s chance of conceiving two days before ovulation is just as likely, if not more likely, as the day before ovulation. What this means for couples trying to conceive is that timing intercourse to occur a couple days before ovulation and the day before ovulation will give them the greatest chance of conceiving.

Boost Your Chances of Getting Pregnant

Getting Pregnant

cervical mucous

conception

getting pregnant

ovulation

8 comments

Most recent See All

By Seabiscut3 on 04/18/12 at 2:54 pm

Great article!

I had just heard about the day of ovulation not being the most fertile in this new book I'm reading called [I]The Impatient Woman ...

By KarissaJ on 04/18/12 at 12:43 pm

I don't have a regular period so I guess i don't ovulate... Can I still get pregnant ?

By lisa206 on 04/10/12 at 6:14 am

Hi ladies! I'm all confused now... I used an ovulation calculator that works according your cycle length. In my case that is 29 days, so according to t ...

8 comments so far » read more