Increase Your Pregnancy Chances with an Ovulation Calculator
A woman can increase her chances of becoming pregnant if she is fully aware of how her menstrual cycle works and uses an ovulation calculator as a guide.
Even before a baby girl is born she will have as many as 400,000 eggs stored in her newly-formed ovaries. After birth her body will not produce any more eggs and, throughout her fertile years, the ovaries will release a total of only three to four hundred eggs.
A girl’s first period can occur at any time between the age of ten and fourteen. From then on, until the menopause, she will have a monthly period at the start of each menstrual cycle.
Ovulation occurs 14 days before a period, so if a woman has a 28 day cycle this is exactly halfway between periods. If the cycle is regularly 30 days she can calculate when she will ovulate by subtracting 14 days from the first day of the next expected period (i.e. on day 16).
Many women will have shorter or longer cycles lasting anything between 23 and 35 days. This is quite normal and medical help should only be sought if the periods are not within these limits.
Interestingly, although the ovary prepares up to 20 eggs each month for release, only one (or two if it’s going to be non-identical twins) prevails and makes it out of the ovary to the fallopian tubes. These tubes will gently transport the tiny egg on its journey to the uterus (womb) using a rippling wave-like motion. The journey from ovary to uterus takes about five days.
In simple terms, if the egg becomes fertilised by a sperm at this mid-cycle stage it will settle into the uterus lining (endometrium) of the uterus and start to grow into a baby.
If fertilisation doesn’t occur or the egg doesn’t implant into the uterus the woman’s oestrogen and progesterone levels will drop and the womb lining will begin to produce chemicals that reduce the blood supply to the uterus and cause it to contract.
This is then the beginning of the woman’s next period and next menstrual cycle.
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