Important Terminology

A woman's cycle begins on the first day of her period (or when "Aunt Flow" [AF] as it is so lovingly called) arrives. This is marked as cycle day (or cd) 1. Each subsequent day is numbered in the same way until her period starts again, starting the next cycle (cd 1) again. For the textbook woman, the length of this cycle is 28 days, but any woman's cycle can very + or - about 5 days. If the cycle is too short, it could prevent pregnancy because the lining of the uterus isn't built up enough. It could also indicate that your progesterone levels are too low meaning you couldn't even hold a pregnancy. If your cycle is too long, it could mean that you are not ovulating at all.

Usually around cd 14 (give or take a few days) is when ovulation occurs. This is when the egg is released from the fallopian tubes. It only survives for about 24 hours before it disintegrates and is flushed away with the next cycle. The sperm, on the other hand, can survive for anywhere between 3-7 days. So, there is only a window of about 5 days that the woman can get pregnant- from about 5 days before ovulation to just after it is released. If fertilization occurs, it takes about 5-8 days for it to travel back through the tubes into the uterus. And, any given month, a woman has only 20% chance of this process being completed.

In order to plan the optimal time of intercourse to conceive, a woman can take ovulation predictor kits (OPK's). This test is taken just like a pregnancy test and turns positive when it detects a luteinizing hormone, the hormone given off as your body gears up for ovulation. Once you get a positive, it is best to have sex in the 3 or so days following it.

In conjunction with the OPK's, it is helpful to take your basal body temperature (BBT) each day. This is done with a thermometer, like any other one, which simply determines your temperature to the 100th of a degree. So it says "98.63"degrees instead of just "98.6". You are supposed to take this temperature every day before you even get out of bed or do anything and after at least 3 hours of sleep. This ensures that you get your average resting temperature. Before you ovulate, your temperature will stay in a certain range. Once ovulation occurs, your temperature will spike up about .3 degrees due to the increased progesterone hormone released- a subtle but significant difference. Once this spike occurs, ovulation has already occured and it's too late to conceive that cycle. The significance of this entire process is first, to get a general idea of when ovulation occurs for you each month, and second, to know when there's no more chance of conception anymore. Your temperature can also reveal some other important things throughout your cycle. If it goes up again about 5-8 days past ovulation (5-8 DPO's) and stays up for the duration of your cycle, it can indicate (although not always) that implantation has occured. This is called a triphasic cycle. Furthermore, if you have just one drop during these same 5-8 days and then it goes back up, this could also indicate implantion has occured.

There is much more to the whole process, but these are the most basic details of conceiving, and the details that pertain to me the most.