Maximizing Pregnancy Rates
If you are healthy, have no fertility problems, and want to conceive a baby, you can dramatically improve your chances of becoming pregnant by tracking when you ovulate and having sex near this time. There are several tools available to help you determine the appropriate time to have sex each month.
Timing Sex
The first and easiest step to improving your chances of getting pregnant is to chart your menstrual cycle so that you can have sexual intercourse as close as possible to ovulation. Begin by keeping track of the intervals between day one of your period and day one of your next period. The number of days between the first days of each of your periods is known as your cycle interval.
Once you know your cycle interval, subtract 14 from that number to determine when in your cycle you will likely ovulate. For example, if you have a typical 28-day cycle, by subtracting 14 from 28 you can feel confident that you ovulate around the 14th day of each cycle.
To increase your chances of getting pregnant, have sex every other day around the day you ovulate. For example, if you are on a 28-day cycle, you should have sex on days 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18 of your cycle to maximize your chance of pregnancy. Because sperm can live two to three days, this every other day approach helps to ensure that sperm will be available when eggs are released at ovulation.
Using Your Basal Body Temperature
If you are not sure if you are ovulating, charting your morning temperature can help you determine if and when ovulation occurs. Simply take your temperature before you get out of bed each morning and plot it on a chart. When you see a shift of at least 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit, you know that ovulation occurred. Most women have a lower body temperature right before ovulation and a higher body temperature right after ovulation.
Because the basal body temperature method can only tell you after the fact that ovulation occurred, it is not an optimum way to maximize your chances of pregnancy. It is, however, useful over the long-term for understanding when you ovulate so you can determine the optimum time for having intercourse.
Ovulation Predictor Kits
Ovulation predictor kits test your urine for signs of those hormones that indicate that ovulation is about to occur. These kits usually detect levels of lutenizing hormone (LH), which triggers ovulation and generally rises 12 to 36 hours before you ovulate.
To properly use ovulation predictor kits, you should start testing your urine three days before you think you ovulate. For example, if you think you have a 28-day cycle, you ovulate on day 14 so you should begin testing your urine on day 11 of your cycle. This approach allows you to clearly see a negative result, indicating the lack of LH, and then clearly see a positive result, indicating the presence of LH. You should ovulate about 36 hours after a positive test result. To improve your chance of getting pregnant, you should have intercourse the day that you see a positive result as well as the day after a positive result.
There are also ovulation predictor kits that test saliva rather than urine. These kits include a glass slide and a microscope that allow you to look for a certain visible pattern in your saliva sample that indicates you will ovulate within the next several days. While these tests are not as accurate as those ovulation predictor kits that test urine, they are less costly and reusable.
Do-It-Yourself Semen Analysis
Many drugstores now sell male infertility tests that help measure sperm concentration. While the test does not provide the same specific information indicated by a medical semen analysis, it can tell if the minimum number of motile sperm is present. These tests are useful for helping couples identify if there are problems with the male partner's fertility so that they can seek professional treatment early in their quest to become pregnant.
