subject: How Many Hours Do You Have After Ovulation To Become Pregnant? [print this page] How Many Hours Do You Have After Ovulation To Become Pregnant?
I recently received an email from a woman who had been trying to get pregnant. She had been taking her basal body temperature (BBM) and had determined that she had ovulated the day before she wrote me. However, her husband had been out of town and she had determined that they had arrived home and tried to conceive approximately 8 hours (by her calculations) after she had ovulated. She wanted to know if they had waited too long to become pregnant or if it was possible to conceive some hours after ovulation. I will tell you what I told her in the following article.
The Lifespan Of The Egg And The Sperm: Most people know that there is a certain time in the month when a woman's egg is released when she is the most fertile. This is known as ovulation. However, both the sperm and egg have life spans that should be considered. The egg begins weakening after about 1/2 per day but can survive for around 2 days. On the other hand, the father to be's sperm can survive for slightly longer than the egg or for around three days.
So, knowing this, let's look at this woman's scenario. Let's say that her temperature charting was dead right. (I am not all that confident in this however, which I will discuss more below.) Her egg could possibly remain viable for 48 hours instead of mere hours and she had even more time to play with in terms of her husband's sperm. Assuming that she was right in her calculations, she most definitely could have become pregnant on the day that her husband returned home.
As a matter of fact, I often tell women who want boy babies to consider having intercourse on the day of or the day following ovulation. The reason for this is that the Y sperm chromosomes (or those that give you sons) survive for a much shorter period of time than those that give you a daughter (other wise known as the X.) The X's live for quite a bit longer than the Y's. So if you have intercourse early in the ovulation cycle, the sperm is more likely to be met with X's. However, if you wait until ovulation has occurred, you give the egg more exposure to the Y's.
Now, the optimal timing for a boy is having intercourse on the day of ovulation. But, since the egg can live for up to 48 hours and the sperm can hang in there for even longer than that, having sex on the day following ovulation can most certainly result in pregnancy, although it's slightly more likely to give you a son than a daughter.
If your baby's gender is important to you, then you can most definitely use this timing to your advantage. But, timing is not the only consideration here. If you want to chose your baby's gender you'll also want to look at your PH and the sexual positions that you use. If you don't care about gender and are merely wanting to get pregnant as quickly as possible, then timing is going to be your most important variable.
In either case, I don't feel that taking your temperature to determine your ovulation day is the best way to go. There are so many places where this can go wrong. There are many reasons why your temperature may rise or fall or even fluctuate. In my view, you'll likely have better results if you use a reliable ovulation predictor. Some are better than others but even the higher end models are rarely over $30 and this cost can be very worth it if it helps you to get the results that you want and to be right in your calculations.
I've put together a few websites that take a lot of the guess work out of getting pregnant and choosing your baby's gender. You'll find step by step instructions, resources for determining ovulation times, douche recipes and food PH lists, information on when to conceive, tips, support, and examples of ovulation predictors / PH testing strips.
If you want a boy baby, check out http://conceive-a-boy-baby.com/
If you want a girl baby, check out http://conceive-a-girl-baby.com/
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