How to Schedule Baby-Making Sex With an Ovulation Calendar
Trying to conceive? Here's how to determine your peak fertile days for baby-making sex with an ovulation calendar.
GETTY IMAGES
Medically reviewed by Kiarra King, M.D.
When trying to conceive (TTC), your game plan may be to have as much sex as possible. But did you know that timing your intercourse with ovulation significantly increases your odds of getting pregnant?
An ovulation calendar lets people track their ovulation and pinpoint the approximately six-day window each cycle when they're most likely to conceive. Read on for everything you need to know about using an ovulation calendar to find your most fertile days for conception.
Related: 8 Sex Questions You Might Have When Trying to Conceive
What Is Ovulation?
Ovulation occurs when your ovary releases a mature egg into the fallopian tube that then moves down the fallopian tube into the uterus, says Obosa Osawe, MD, an OB-GYN at Piedmont Physicians Obstetrics and Gynecology in Newnan, Georgia.
About 24 to 36 hours before ovulation, luteinizing hormone (LH) surges, triggering the egg's release. The egg survives about 12 to 24 hours in the reproductive tract, and if it's fertilized with sperm during this time frame, you can become pregnant. If sperm doesn't fertilize the egg, it's reabsorbed and shed with the uterine lining during your period.
Many people notice their cervical mucus becomes thinner and more slippery (like raw egg whites) just before and during ovulation. This fertile-quality mucus helps sperm move more easily through the reproductive tract. While not everyone experiences noticeable symptoms of ovulation, some other signs may include:
Breast tenderness
Heightened sense of smell
Increased libido
Mild pelvic pain (sometimes known as mittelschmerz)
Spotting
How Does an Ovulation Calendar Work?
Ovulation calendars offer a way to track your ovulation to determine when you are likely to be most fertile. There are a few ways you can track ovulation, including:
Ovulation tracker apps, which help you track and record information about your cycle
Ovulation predictor kits (OPKs), which detect luteinizing hormone (LH) in your urine to predict impending ovulation
Charting your cervical mucus, which can help you identify the change in texture that often signals impending ovulation
Charting your basal body temperature (BBT), which can help you identify a slight rise in temperature that is correlated with ovulation
All these tools essentially work by helping you identify where you are in your cycle so that you can time baby-making sex accordingly. Using two or more of these methods together can help you more accurately determine your most fertile days each cycle.
Predicting Fertility With Ovulation Calendars
Couples who are trying to conceive should plan sex around ovulation since the optimal time to try to get pregnant is when you're ovulating, says Dr. Osawe. The chances of pregnancy are highest on the day of ovulation and the 24 hours leading up to it.
But conception is still possible when sex is timed several days before ovulation since sperm can live in the fallopian tubes for three to five days, says Jingwen Hou, MD, PhD, an OB-GYN at Kaiser Permanente in Hawaii. After ovulation, however, the window to conceive is short. Once the egg dissolves, within 12 to 24 hours of release, it can no longer lead to pregnancy.
Potential Pitfalls of Ovulation Calendars
There are a few common pitfalls to avoid when using an ovulation calendar to pinpoint your most fertile days leading up to and just after ovulation. The best way to avoid these pitfalls is to understand how different ovulation prediction methods work and find which will be best for you and your cycle.
For example, the average menstrual cycle is 28 days long. "If this is true for you, [you can] expect to ovulate about 14 days after the first day of your last period," says Dr. Osawe. However, not everyone has a 28-day cycle. In fact, a normal healthy cycle can last anywhere between 24 and 38 days, which means ovulation be as early as 11 days and or as late as 21 days into your cycle.
Simply using a calendar to count 14 days after the first day of your last period to predict when you'll ovulate doesn't account for cycles that are regularly shorter or longer than the average 28-day cycle or for natural fluctuations in your cycle. If your cycle length varies or is regularly shorter or longer than 28 days, you may be better off using another method of predicting ovulation.
Charting basal body temperature can give you great insight into your cycle, but using it alone will only give you part of the picture. The slight rise in temperature associated with ovulation typically occurs after you ovulate, which means you will have missed the fertile days leading up to ovulation—and it'll be a race against the clock to fertilize the egg before it's no longer viable.
Getting an accurate BBT reading can also be challenging as it requires taking the measurement at the same time every day (immediately upon waking) and there are many factors that can skew the reading such as illness, alcohol consumption, and even stress. Research has estimated that using BBT to track ovulation is only accurate approximately 22% of the time.
While ovulation predictor kits and charting cervical mucus quality both give you a better chance of taking full advantage of your full fertile window by identifying the potentially fertile days leading up to ovulation (giving you more opportunities to schedule baby-making sex), neither method guarantees or confirms ovulation—only that your body is preparing to ovulate.
So if you experience anovulatory cycles (cycles in which you don't ovulate), you may get a positive OPK or detect fertile cervical mucus but not actually ovulate. Anovulation is common in people who have polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), are in perimenopause, or have a very low body mass index (BMI), but can also be caused by other chronic health conditions.
The bottom line is that the accuracy of an ovulation calendar will depend on how accurate the methods of predicting ovulation are for you. There isn't necessarily a one-size-fits-all approach, but in most cases, using a combination of methods will paint the most complete picture.
Using an Ovulation Calendar to Conceive a Boy or Girl
Wondering if you can predict or influence fetal sex using an ovulation calendar? Some people hope to pinpoint fertile days specifically for conceiving a male or female baby. There is a theory that your conception date could influence your baby's sex. This idea (called the Shettles method) was first introduced by Landrum B. Shettles in the 1960s. His book, How to Choose the Sex of Your Baby, co-authored with David Rorvik, describes the theory in more detail:
Fertile days for a male: Y-sperm (which produce fetuses with XY chromosomes) supposedly travel more quickly through the reproductive system and have a shorter life span. So, the idea is sex close to ovulation is more likely to result in a male.
Fertile days for a female: X-sperm (which produce fetuses with XX chromosomes) move more slowly and have a longer life span. So, in theory, if you have sex a couple of days before ovulation, the X-sperm will still be around when you ovulate, while the Y-sperm will die, increasing your odds of having a female.
However, there is little scientific evidence to support this theory. In the '90s, multiple studies found no correlation between the timing of baby-making sex and fetal sex. More recently, a 2016 study also found no meaningful impact of timing intercourse for the purpose of conceiving a male or female.
Plus, if the goal is to get pregnant, the best method is to have sex often during your fertile window rather than restricting it to certain days, which theoretically limits your chances of conceiving.
It's also important to keep in mind that sex is assigned at birth based on the appearance of a baby's genitalia. While sex assigned at birth often matches a person's gender (called cisgender), sometimes, for transgender, intersex, and gender nonbinary people, it does not. Gender is a personal identity that exists on a spectrum and can change throughout a person's lifetime. More importantly, it is something that a person defines for themselves, so it's best not to get too attached to predicting a baby's gender.
Key Takeaway
Understanding how to determine when you ovulate can increase your chances of becoming pregnant. Try using an ovulation tracker—or learn how to track your ovulation on a regular calendar—to help determine the best time for TTC sex.
For more Parents news, make sure to sign up for our newsletter!
Read the original article on Parents.
