Question

When do most people ovulate? And how can you tell if you are or not?

Answer

Ovulation occurs approximately 2 weeks prior to the woman’s next menstruation. In other words, once a woman has her period, she can look back and identify when ovulation would have occurred.

Obviously, this is not useful for planning a family----to do that, a woman must be able to tell on any given day if it is a fertile or infertile day. A woman’s body produces signs that tell her when she is fertile, and woman can easily learn to observe and interpret these signs. She cannot identify the specific day of ovulation by observing these signs, but that is somewhat irrelevant, as fertility lasts longer than just the day of ovulation. A woman is fertile from the time her body begins producing the cervical mucus that indicates ovulation is approaching, and this can begin as much a week before the actual ovulation. The sperm can live for up to 3-5 days in this cervical mucus, and conception can occur up to 24 hours after ovulation, so the window of fertility is far longer the day of ovulation---more like almost a week of every cycle.

A woman’s temperature also rises when she ovulates, so if a woman were to take her temperature at the same time every day, and chart this, she could observe the rise that occurs with ovulation.

A woman can make casual observations of these changes, and know the general timing of fertility and ovulation in the cycle, and by doing so learn to know her body, and could also anticipate when her next period would begin. But to accurately identify the beginning and end of fertility, she must learn a very thorough technique for observing and interpreting these changes----this is called Natural Family Planning. With instruction from an NFP teacher, a woman can be taught how to identify precisely the beginning and end of fertility, and she and her husband can respond on this information to either achieve a pregnancy, or avoid one.

Check this web site for more information about your fertility cycle and the advantages of learning about your body and keeping it healthy for your husband and the children you will have.

Judy Wilmurt

© Copyright 2005 by www.canfp.org

The information on this page and web site is for informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical diagnosis and treatment by a physician.