Understanding Fertility and Ovulation

Understanding ovulation, the release of the egg from one of the two ovaries, is absolutely crucial to maximizing your chances of conceiving.

Successfully predicting the time of ovulation allows you to time sexual intercourse appropriately, which will greatly increase your likelihood for conceiving during any given cycle.

During the first half of the monthly cycle, a woman's body produces increasingly greater amounts of follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and estrogen. The egg to be released that month is stimulated to grow by FSH. Estrogen, on the other hand, is responsible for the development of the uterine lining, which grows during each cycle to prepare for potential pregnancy.

The selection of the egg and the ovary it's released from is completely random. The release of the egg occurs approximately halfway through each cycle. For most women, this means ovulation occurs 14 days before her period begins.

A woman with a standard cycle length of 28 days will probably ovulate on day 14 of her cycle. "Normal" menstrual cycle lengths can range from as short as 24 days, to as long as 35 days. So the "14-day-trick" is not precise enough to allow for perfect timing of sexual intercourse.

Predicting ovulation based on your last cycle is also ineffective, due to the changing nature of your body - not every cycle will be identical in length.

Successfully predicting ovulation is one of the most important steps in maximising your chances of conception. It's also one of the most difficult steps to get right. There is a chapter in "The Fertility Plan" devoted solely to this subject will cover in detail the most reliable methods for successfully predicting ovulation.