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Peak Fertility and Pregnancy

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Source: Unsplash | Alexander Krivitskiy

Getting pregnant isn’t necessarily as easy as you would hope and for some people it can be a challenge that makes the efforts you go to to avoid pregnancy when it’s not wanted into a cruel irony. We also tend to see fertility as a black and white issue: either you are fertile or not. In reality, there are many graduations of fertility and even if you stand a low chance of conceiving, you can improve your odds by identifying when you’re at peak fertility in each menstrual cycle and concentrating your attempts to conceive on that period.

What is Peak Fertility?

For women, their effective fertility rises and falls over the length of their menstrual cycle. During their ‘fertile days’ or ‘fertile window’, the average lifespan of an egg after ovulation can overlap with the average lifespan of sperm after ejaculation. During this time you are at peak fertility: you stand the best chance of conceiving. If you don’t know when your fertile window is, your chances of conceiving drop dramatically.

Finding Ovulation

If you want to find your fertile day you need to find out when it’s likely you’re going to ovulate – your ‘ovulation window’.

There are two primary ways of doing this: using test strips that react with your urine in the presence of the hormone that stimulates ovulation, LH (or Luteinising Hormone). You can also chart your basal body temperature: this is the low level your body drops to overnight, during an extended rest. Minute changes at this base level can reveal when you’re going to ovulate.

Modern technology can make BBT tracking more accurate and less difficult. Automated sensors can take temperature readings overnight for more accurate data, and apps can process those into results and predictions, to reduce the risk of error.

Finding Your Fertile Window

With this information in hand, you simply need to plot it on a calendar, along with the dates your period begins. While cycles may vary between women, if yours is regular you can expect to ovulate at the same point in your cycle from month to month. Noting how long ovulation falls after your period begins in one month gives you a good indicator for when it will fall in the next and the next. This can give you the vital insight you need to improve your chances of conceiving when you want to.

Debunking 3 Myths about Tubal Reversal Surgery

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Tubal reversal — which is also called advanced tubal reversal, tubal ligation reversal, microsurgical tubal reanastomosis, and tubal sterilization reversal — is a surgical procedure that restores fertility after a woman has undergone tubal reversal (i.e. has had her “tubes tied”). While the process is complex, it essentially involves reconnecting the blocked segments of the fallopian tubes, so that eggs and sperm can once again travel through them, and under the right circumstances fertilization has the chance to occur.

While tubal reversal has been around for decades, as with many health topics — particularly those that are personal, intimate and sensitive — there is quite a bit of misinformation floating across the web; especially on discussion boards and chat rooms. This isn’t to suggest that people are deliberately going out of their way to confuse or mislead others, because they aren’t. But as the old saying goes, “a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.” Unfortunately, this applies to the topic of tubal reversal surgery.

To point you in the right direction — which, of course, is not to advise you on what to do, but simply to help you separate fact from fiction so that you can head towards making an informed decision — below I debunk three enduring myths about tubal reversal surgery:

Myth: You’ll have heavier and more painful periods after tubal reversal surgery.

Fact:  Actually, the opposite is the case. Tubal ligation is what typically leads to painful, heavy periods, along with unease and moodiness. Tubal reversal diminishes or eliminates these symptoms.

Myth: The recovery period after tubal reversal surgery lasts for months.

Fact: As noted by WebMD, most women go home the same day they have surgery (which takes about 2-3 hours), and return to their normal day-to-day activities in about 2 weeks.

Myth: Getting tubal reversal surgery is a virtual guarantee that you’ll get pregnant.

Fact: The pregnancy rate for tubal reversal is 40-85 percent, and when conception happens, it usually does so within the first year after surgery. While these are good odds (especially since the chances of pregnancy after tubal ligation but before tubal reversal is zero), it is clearly not a guarantee. There are many factors involved, including the male partner’s sperm count and motility.

The Bottom LineX

Naturally, this article — or any other for that matter — cannot cover everything that you need to know about tubal reversal surgery. The best person to speak to is your OB/GYN, who may then refer you to a microsurgeon for more information (note some OB/GYNs are also microsurgeons).

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We left our home in Sydney, Australia many moons ago in May 2012 and, other than a brief stint back in Perth for Christmas and a wedding in early 2014, we have been travelling the world nomadically ever since, running a business from our laptops and we’re here to show you how to do it!