Understanding Your Ovulation Cycle

By Jenny Belle

Are you planning to start a family? As you may know, there are only a few days of the month when a woman's body is fertile, so it is important to understand how to predict your ovulation in order to get pregnant faster.

We consider the first day of your period to be the beginning of your menstrual cycle, since it is a date that can be determined with some certainty. That is also why doctors use it for projecting a future due date if you get pregnant, since most people don't know for sure when fertilization actually occurred. It would be so much more convenient if we could actually see what's going on inside!

In this new cycle, (usually) one egg starts to mature in your ovaries and prepares to get released during ovulation. The body triggers ovulation by increasing the Lutenizing Hormone (LH) in your blood stream, which is why most of urine-based ovulation tests (sometimes known casually as "pee sticks") as well as saliva ovulation sticks check for the level of LH in your bodily fluids for an indication of recent LH surge as preliminary to ovulation.

Another way of predicting your ovulation is through the charting of your basal temperature. This requires a very accurate thermometer, one that can measure your temperature to the hundreds of a degree. For charting to work correctly, you need to take your temperature immediately after you wake, before you start moving and increasing your body temperature that way. Hormonal shifts in your body will reflect in changes in your resting temperature, so if you take your temperature consistently and graph them, you will see trends that give indications of the changes inside your body.

At ovulation, the mature egg pops out of the ovary and travels down the fallopian tubes towards the uterus, which then has a new layer of lining prepared. The sperm needs to meet and fertilize the egg while it's traveling, so the optimal fertile times for the woman range from a day or two before ovulation to a few days afterwards, since the sperm can survive in her body for up to a couple of days.

Predicting your ovulation can be a complicated and frustrating process if you are not used to it or if your body doesn't behave 100% like the textbook says, so for an easier way to determine your fertility level, you may want to consider a digital ovulation predictor such as the Clearblue Fertility Monitor that will do all the thinking for you. - 31802

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