10 Jan Timing Sex for Pregnancy
When you have sex is incredibly important for successful fertilization of the egg. For many years, people focused on ovulation day and timed sex accordingly. While ovulation is undoubtedly a key factor, advances of microbiology have allowed us to learn far more than we ever knew before about the life cycle of healthy sperm and eggs.
As a result, we now realize conceiving a baby at home is more likely to happen if there are as many sperm in the female reproductive tract as possible when the egg first emerges from the follicle and into the fallopian tubes.
This is due to the fact that while the average, viable egg lives anywhere from 12- to 24-hours before being reabsorbed by the body, healthy sperm can live anywhere from three to five days (and some “super sperm” have lived even longer than that).
Tips for Timing Sex At Home
Here are five tips that exponentially increase your chances of getting pregnant at home.
If you’ve done all-of-the-below and you’re still struggling to conceive, visit, When to See a Fertility Specialist, and then contact a qualified fertility specialist near you.
1. Make sure you’re healthy in body, mind, and spirit
Your mental and physical wellbeing plays a significant role in conceiving. Everything from over- or under-eating to anxiety, drug/alcohol use, and stress can negatively impact reproductive health. Addressing current health issues such as obesity, endometriosis or PCOS, diabetes, etc., also support healthy reproduction.
If your goal is to get pregnant, do all you can to live as healthy and well as possible.
2. Use a fertility app to track menstruation and ovulation
We live in a fast-paced world, so it’s easy to ignore irregular periods or other signs that latent infertility factors need to be addressed. The world of apps has made it easier than ever to track your menstrual cycle. Click Here to review a list of top-notch fertility apps and start using the one that appeals to you.
Once you’ve done so for three to five months, the app will give you a pretty accurate idea of when you’re most likely to ovulate.
3. Use an ovulation prediction kit (OPK).
Purchase an at-home OPK from your local pharmacy. Use it as directed to see if your app’s prediction is accurate or not. If you do this for a few months in a row, you’ll hone in on your personal menstrual cycle and most likely fertile window. Or, you may notice that something isn’t happening at all or that things are irregular, in which case you can check-in with your OB/GYN or a fertility specialist sooner rather than later.
4. Have sex every-other-day for the days leading up to ovulation
As we mentioned above, you’re more likely to conceive if there are plenty of sperm waiting to meet your recently-released egg. Having sex every other day for the three to four days before you’re due to ovulate primes the conception pumps.
Then, celebrate ovulation day – and the day after if you’d like – with another round of intercourse, and you’ll know you’ve done all you can for this fertility window.
5. Have sex more often outside the fertile window.
It turns out that our savvy bodies equate more frequent sex outside the fertile window with the possibility of pregnancy. This triggers positive changes in the immune system, making it more likely to protect a fertilized/implanted egg, rather than attack it as a foreign invader.
Accurately timing sex for pregnancy greatly improves your chances of conception. Having a hard time conceiving despite doing everything “right?” Contact us here at the Fertility Center of Dallas to schedule a consultation. 214-823-2692.