Let’s cut to the chase and talk about the best time to have sex to achieve pregnancy.   

When I first started trying for a baby, I used an app. I logged my period length and it gave me my fertile window. However, it was just a guess, a guess made around the length of my cycle. A guess that was wrong and it would have been the cause of a lot of heart ache because I would have been completely missing my window, or only catching some of it if I hadn’t learned a fertility awareness method. 

So I’ll break it down. Women are fertile for 5-6 days a cycle. Why is that? Well, sperm can survive for 5 days inside of us. We have cervical mucus that is produced during our fertile window that nourishes and keeps them alive during the ovulatory window. We have two types of fertile cervical mucus, which I will talk about in another post that facilitate the transport and survival of the sperm. So we have sex, the sperm swim and are transported by the cervical mucus where they wait in the fallopian tubes for an egg to be released. Once an egg is released, it will survive for 12-24 hours. You are most fertile in the 2 days before ovulation and on the day of ovulation, so knowing when ovulation approaches is key. 

So why can an app be so misleading? Say you have a 28 day cycle, most apps will pinpoint your ovulation on day 14. But let’s say you don’t ovulate until day 18. So your app will show you the best days to have sex are days 9-15 but really the best days are days 13-19. There is some overlap, but not an overlap on those higher chance days, close to ovulation day. It could be a huge game changer to know your cycle. Once you learn a fertility awareness method, you’ll know when your fertile window starts, you’ll be able to pinpoint your approximate time of ovulation, and you’ll be able to optimize your chances of pregnancy.