Getting Pregnant
Getting pregnant is easy, right? In reality, it’s not as easy as it may seem. Many of us are taught, often from an early age, that all that’s required to get pregnant is to have unprotected sex, even just once, and then bam–you’re pregnant–but it isn’t really that easy. Everything has to come together just so, and you really have only about a day each month to get the timing right. Even then, there is only about a 20% chance that you’ll conceive.
Each month, one of the 1 million eggs present in your ovaries, which have been there since before birth, is released. Usually this happens somewhere between the 12th and 16th days of your menstrual cycle. The egg, once it is released from the ovary, begins to travel down the fallopian tube, on its way toward your uterus. This is ovulation, and if you plan on getting pregnant, you’d better get to it. Your egg has about 24 hours to be fertilized before it dies. This is a very small window of opportunity!
Men, on the other hand, are constantly producing sperm. It takes approximately 64 to 72 days from start to finish to make just one sperm cell. 30 to 300 million of these little guys are released with each ejaculation, and as a result, men’s bodies work to produce sperm 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Once released into the woman’s body, sperm can live for up to 72 hours waiting to find that egg. So, if you are trying to get pregnant, you’ll want to have sex at least every other day during the middle of your menstrual cycle for the best odds.
Even still, many things can get in the way of the sperm finding your newly-released egg. The acid level of your vagina must be just right or the sperm will die. Then there is your cervical mucus. Cervical mucus generally works like a net which sperm can’t get through, but for about 2 days or so a month, when you are most fertile, it loosens up and the strongest swimmers can make it all the way to the other side! There is still an arduous journey ahead of these sperm, though. They must swim about 7 inches to reach your uterus. That might not seem like a lot, but considering that sperm swim about an inch every 15 minutes, it can take them anywhere from 45 minutes to up to 12 hours to reach the egg.
Those that do find the egg must work their hardest, now, to break through the outer shell. The first sperm that makes it through creates a reaction in the egg that immediately makes it impenetrable. No other sperm can get in. Then, over the next 24 hours, the genetic material of the sperm and egg mix and create a new cell that begins dividing.
It’s really not all that easy to get pregnant. A great many events must come together at exactly the right time. It can take some completely healthy couples up to a year of trying to conceive before getting pregnant. So, get busy and enjoy the “trying!”