Sorry about the no-pregnancy-this-month result. It's very frustrating, but you sound like you're well into another cycle now and busily trying to figure out how to maximize your chances!
I tell you what, the questions you asked could be an entire book titled Things That Are Just Not Clear. Because they aren't. We hear that sperm lives 3 days, and then someone gets pregnant 5 days after having sex. Or we hear that an egg lives just 24 hours, and then a woman gets pregnant 4 days later. We assume, always, two things:
1. Somewhere, we were off -- we ovulated later than we thought, etc, and/or
2. Our bodies have rhythms of their own that all the science in the world can't always explain.
So when you're trying to have a baby, and trying to pin down all these elusive things, you have to realize that there's wiggle room on ALL of them. Which is why you can do everything "right" for several months and still not end up pregnant; and then some other month comes along when you don't even remember having sex, and somehow you are pregnant. It's still a mystery, no matter how close we can get to the science.
One of the things that does happen to be relatively constant is the number of days AFTER ovulation before your next period starts. It tends to be 14 days, regardless of how many days it was before ovulation. Meaning, if you have three women who have regular cycles of 26, 28 and 30 days, they're still all starting their periods about 14 days after ovulation. So the 26-day cycle is ovulating on day 12, the 28-day cycle is ovulating on day 14, and the 30-day cycle is ovulating on day 16. That's because ovulation itself sets in motion a series of events that always takes about the same amount of time. So if you know how long your cycles have been for the last several months, that's another method of figuring out fertility.
Do you know about taking your basal body temperature? It's another way to figure out when you ovulated. The basal body temperature is your temperature first thing in the morning, before you've even gotten out of bed. You use a special thermometer (a basal thermometer), which shows fractions of a degree. By charting your temperature each morning you begin to learn your body's monthly temperature pattern. And generally, we all make a small dip in temperature right before we ovulate, and a rise in temperature right after we do. By using this method and your ovulation kits you may be able to confirm more easily just when that egg was released:
http://www.fertilityplus.org/faq/bbt/bbtfaq.html
And what your ovulation predictor kits are measuring is your level of LH, or lutenizing hormone, which tends to be released just before ovulation takes place. So my best guess would be that when you first see that the hormone has registered, ovulation is within the next 12-24 hours (though some sources say 24-36 hours). The kits do stress testing around the same time each day, do you do that? And that LH tends to be present in the afternoons, so evening testing may be more accurate than morning testing.
And as far as your questions about sperm, what you have to realize is that without testing, you don't know whether your partner has a high, medium or low sperm count, whether his sperm has high, medium or low motility, and whether your mucus is hospitable to his sperm. Those also are things that can affect timing. Here's a page that works to explain all that:
http://www.early-pregnancy-tests.com/sperm.html
If you have a strong swimmer and an egg ready and waiting, it takes between 30 minutes and two hours for the sperm to make the journey to the egg. As soon as they bump into one another, fertilization happens. I didn't find any references to "six hours." And in fact in most offices where doctors are doing IVF or artificial insemination, the woman remains on her back for about 30 minutes afterward. That's all.
Does all this help you? Or does it just stress you out more? Seriously, the best thing you can do is figure out your best estimate and not make yourself crazy. I'm convinced that obsessing about it can sometimes change our body chemistry -- stress brings on cortisol, for instance -- that makes us have a harder time conceiving.
Best of luck -- and be sure to come back if there's anything more we can answer!
Comment Reply
Hi, Anon!
Sorry about the no-pregnancy-this-month result. It's very frustrating, but you sound like you're well into another cycle now and busily trying to figure out how to maximize your chances!
I tell you what, the questions you asked could be an entire book titled Things That Are Just Not Clear. Because they aren't. We hear that sperm lives 3 days, and then someone gets pregnant 5 days after having sex. Or we hear that an egg lives just 24 hours, and then a woman gets pregnant 4 days later. We assume, always, two things:
1. Somewhere, we were off -- we ovulated later than we thought, etc, and/or
2. Our bodies have rhythms of their own that all the science in the world can't always explain.
So when you're trying to have a baby, and trying to pin down all these elusive things, you have to realize that there's wiggle room on ALL of them. Which is why you can do everything "right" for several months and still not end up pregnant; and then some other month comes along when you don't even remember having sex, and somehow you are pregnant. It's still a mystery, no matter how close we can get to the science.
One of the things that does happen to be relatively constant is the number of days AFTER ovulation before your next period starts. It tends to be 14 days, regardless of how many days it was before ovulation. Meaning, if you have three women who have regular cycles of 26, 28 and 30 days, they're still all starting their periods about 14 days after ovulation. So the 26-day cycle is ovulating on day 12, the 28-day cycle is ovulating on day 14, and the 30-day cycle is ovulating on day 16. That's because ovulation itself sets in motion a series of events that always takes about the same amount of time. So if you know how long your cycles have been for the last several months, that's another method of figuring out fertility.
Do you know about taking your basal body temperature? It's another way to figure out when you ovulated. The basal body temperature is your temperature first thing in the morning, before you've even gotten out of bed. You use a special thermometer (a basal thermometer), which shows fractions of a degree. By charting your temperature each morning you begin to learn your body's monthly temperature pattern. And generally, we all make a small dip in temperature right before we ovulate, and a rise in temperature right after we do. By using this method and your ovulation kits you may be able to confirm more easily just when that egg was released:
http://www.fertilityplus.org/faq/bbt/bbtfaq.html
And what your ovulation predictor kits are measuring is your level of LH, or lutenizing hormone, which tends to be released just before ovulation takes place. So my best guess would be that when you first see that the hormone has registered, ovulation is within the next 12-24 hours (though some sources say 24-36 hours). The kits do stress testing around the same time each day, do you do that? And that LH tends to be present in the afternoons, so evening testing may be more accurate than morning testing.
Some more info on how OPKs work:
http://www.ehow.com/how-does_4579680_ovulation-predictor-kit-work.html
And as far as your questions about sperm, what you have to realize is that without testing, you don't know whether your partner has a high, medium or low sperm count, whether his sperm has high, medium or low motility, and whether your mucus is hospitable to his sperm. Those also are things that can affect timing. Here's a page that works to explain all that:
http://www.early-pregnancy-tests.com/sperm.html
If you have a strong swimmer and an egg ready and waiting, it takes between 30 minutes and two hours for the sperm to make the journey to the egg. As soon as they bump into one another, fertilization happens. I didn't find any references to "six hours." And in fact in most offices where doctors are doing IVF or artificial insemination, the woman remains on her back for about 30 minutes afterward. That's all.
Does all this help you? Or does it just stress you out more? Seriously, the best thing you can do is figure out your best estimate and not make yourself crazy. I'm convinced that obsessing about it can sometimes change our body chemistry -- stress brings on cortisol, for instance -- that makes us have a harder time conceiving.
Best of luck -- and be sure to come back if there's anything more we can answer!
June 19, 2009 - 9:18amThis Comment
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