Ovulation - How to Know?

Understanding and tracking your menstrual cycle is one of the key ways you can figure out when you are ovulating and releasing an egg that can be fertilized with your husband's or partner's sperm. 

The optimal period when pregnancy can occur is usually six days before ovulation.

Women who have a 28-day cycle, on average, ovulate on day 14, but ovulation can occur between days 11 and 21. Generally, ovulation occurs 14 days before the onset of your next menstrual cycle.

Tracking your cycle is the first step when you are planning for conception:

The fertility window:

The most fertile time for a woman without any fertility problems to get pregnant is six days before ovulation. You also can get pregnant 12-24 hours after your egg has been released if sperm is present. It takes about six hours for sperm to reach the fallopian tube.

Bodily signals of ovulation

Cervical mucus and vaginal secretions are two important signs that ovulation is near. They start to increase five to six days before ovulation, peaking at two to three days before the egg is released.

Cervical mucus becomes more transparent and 'stretchier' and has a consistency similar to egg whites, which helps sperm swim to the egg.

Some women experience a heightened sense of smell, breast tenderness, and abdominal pain and, perhaps, increased libido or light spotting as their body gets ready to ovulate.

Moreover, other ways to check on Ovulation includes; Ovulation Calendar (link), Checking Basal Body Temperature and Urine Tests Kit which are an Ovulation Prediction Kit (OPK) it will test your urine for luteinizing hormone (LH) and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), the two hormones that increase around 36 hours before ovulation when estrogen levels peak.

To understand Ovulation is cardinal as if a couple is trying to conceive, the first and the foremost task is to check your regularity or Ovulation Cycle. The timing of the Ovulation and continuity of the cycle should be regularly checked. If your cycle is irregular it is time you might want to check the above mentioned ways to check the ovulation cycle. 

Physiology:

Sure, you get a period every month, or every few weeks, or every few months, or maybe irregularly (every body is different!). But there's a lot you might not know about what's going inside your body.

Brain triggers Ovulation: Hypothalamus, a region of the brain that connects the nervous and endocine systems and release Gonadotropin releasing hormone which kicks off the ovulatory cycle. That hormone basically activates the pituitat gland in the brain itself to produce other hormones like Luteinizing hormone and Follicle stimulating hormone, which then stimulates ovaries to other hormones namely Estrogen and Progesterone that starts Ovulation.

Ovaries Overacts - Most women have two ovaries, one on the right and one on the left. During the first week or so after your periods begin, both ovaries work hard growing follicles that could become mature eggs. Around the day 7, one egg becomes Dominant Egg and the other follicles in both ovaries take a load off that is they eventually degenerate. These otherwise “lost eggs” are the ones that are matured, retrieved and preserved during egg freezing. The Dominant Egg continues to grow in preparation for her release around day 14.

Each month, only one ovary develops a Dominant Mature Egg. But which ovary develops the Dominanat Egg isn’t a simple left-right-left-right alternation, nor is it purely random. Multiple studies have shown, it is likely due to anatomical differences between right and left sides of the reproductive system, the right ovary is significantly more likely to serve as the palace for your Dominant Egg.