Dear Tracy, I’ve been married for about 3 months now but I’m not ready to have kids. I can’t take the pill because of other medical problems and other birth control methods aren’t always so wonderful. I had heard that there is only a week month where you can get pregnant. Is this true and what week a month is it? I know it’s different for every woman but how can one calculate their own week?
Well, this is a new one for me. I am typically asked questions about love or romance but since this is a question many others might want to know the answer to, I’m going to give it a shot. I want to first say that I’m not a doctor and nothing I say here should be construed as medical advice and you should talk to a real doctor for real advice but that being said here is my answer …. to the best of my understanding, about once every 28 days a female produces an egg that is ready for fertilization. If that egg isn’t fertilized by male sperm then it sheds its lining (that’s your period) and the process starts all over again.
To know what days you are fertile you need to know the first day of your last period. If you don’t know this, then you have to wait until next month. (Again this isn’t an exact science) but count off 5 days on your calendar for menstruation. So let’s say your period starts on the 1st day of the month. You have days 1 – 5 as your red days. Now give yourself 5 more days (days 6 – 10 of the month) and leave those blank. Now put days 11 through 16 of the month as your fertile days. So long story short, the day you start your period + 10 days = the week you are fertile. In reality, you only have about 12 to 48 hours once you release the egg before it begins to disintegrate but sperm can live in your body for approximately 4 to 5 days. So what that means is, if you want to be 100% sure you won’t get pregnant avoid sex altogether or at least during your fertile week which is typically about 10 days after the 1st day of your period, assuming you have a normal cycle.
According to WebMD, In general, every other night around the time of ovulation helps increase your chance of getting pregnant. Sperm can live up to 5 days inside your body. So if you want to avoid getting pregnant, the key is to avoid having sex when you are ovulation.
Don’t get tensed over irregular period cycles though, you can get pregnant without having a period for months.
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there is this great website called fertilityfriend.com it gives you all kinds of info on how to tell when you are ovulating and charting you cycle. There are also ovulation kits you can get at the drug store. I don’t know much about those.