Understanding Your Fertility Cycle | Home

Understanding Your Fertility Cycle

Baby 1 Fertility Scope™ allows you to calculate when you are ovulating, and be able to predict, on a daily basis, when you are most likely to conceive. To accurately detect ovulation you must understand the fertility cycle and read the simple results. Used correctly, Fertility Scope™ can help you get pregnant.

The monthly fertility pattern which occurs regularly in most women beginning at puberty and ending at menopause is called the menstrual cycle. Each cycle is divided into two parts --- before ovulation and after ovulation. Over a 28-day period the cycle typically follows this pattern:

Part 1. Day 1 is the day menstrual bleeding begins. The flow usually lasts from 3-5 days. The first part of the menstrual cycle, from menstruation to ovulation, may vary from 13 to 20 days in length. The actual length may not only differ from one woman to another but also differs in some women from month to month. It is during this first part of the cycle that fertilization can occur. The regularity of this pattern may be upset by such common occurrences as sickness, stress, physical exertion or even climate changes.

Fertilization of the egg can take place during a woman's fertile period which can cover 6 to 7 days. A man's sperm can live inside a woman's womb for about 5 days. Her egg lives for about a day. Fertilization is more likely to happen from intercourse before or during ovulation, rather than several days following ovulation.

Part 2. The second part of the cycle, from ovulation to menstruation, is about the same length in all women. It is during this part that the egg travels down the fallopian tube toward the uterus --- an event which consistently occurs 14 to 16 days before the onset of menstruation regardless of the length of a woman's menstrual cycle. If a single male sperm unites with the egg while it is in the tube the fertilized egg may attach to the spongy lining of the uterus. Pregnancy begins if this "implantation" takes place. If fertilization does not take place the egg will break apart in a day or two. At about Day 25, hormone levels begin to drop. This causes the lining of the uterus to break down and in a few days it is shed in a menstrual period. Another cycle has begun.