Can you ONLY get pregnant when ovulating?

[jokerflowers]

I know this may sounds dumb, but can you only fall pregnant when you ovulate? Or can it happen any time throughout the month but just with a lower chance? Ta 😅

The sperm can literally only fertilise the egg when the egg is released to meet it.

The grey area here is that some women ovulate at earlier or later times of the month than the textbook day 14, and sperm can live for several days inside you.

So in theory, if you had sex at day seven and ovulated early at day ten, it’s possible you could get pregnant.

you can only fall pregnant when ovulating. however, two main caveats:

1. sperm can live for up to 5 days and the egg for up to 24 hours so you can get pregnant even if you haven't had sex on day of ovulation
2. some people ovulate at weird times of the month and not always on day 14 etc I got pregnant it seems i ovulated sometime between day 21 and day 25 of my cycle that month. So unless you're stringently checking you won't know when you're ovulated and even then the tests only give a positive respond accurately 1-2 days before ovulation (so if you've had sex the day before you can get pregnant).

It's only possible for a sperm to fertilise an egg when there is an egg there to fertilise, yes.

However, ovulation isn't always textbook. I got pregnant having sex the day before my period started on one memorable occasion. My cycle was normally always clockwork, but. Somehow an egg was there.

Ah okay this does help, my cycles are always long, I bleed every 31 days or sometimes longer but I use an app to track which knows my cycle and says I ovulate from Friday (I have just had my coil out Friday just gone tho so this may change) so I'm basically doing the feed every day 🤷🏽‍♀️ I have been getting cramps though which is off for me so that's why I asked. Thank youuuuu!

It doesn’t know when you ovulate unless you give it more data or use OPKs.

If you’re in tune with your body you will recognise the signs eg cervical mucus, sex drive and cramps.

Have lots of sex and listen to your body to learn the signs of ovulation.

If no luck for a few months then maybe pick up some opks and start testing from about day 10 to see if you can pick up on the LH surge before ovulation.

I would try not to get obsessive over it but it’s good to have a general idea when your body is gearing up so you can make sure plenty of sex is happening!

You need to ovulate to produce an egg and that only happens once a month (it can happen more than once but rare) but as PP said - once a month doesn’t mean you can only conceive on one day a month, it can actually be spread across a week when you factor in sperm life time etc.

Good luck!

I'm trying not to focus on it too much, these cramps do have me questioning a little though, could they be implantation.. seems fairly unlikely, I can't remember if I even had them with my previous pregnancies. I'm so impatient 😅 I'm going to have sex every day and try my best to track my mucus but that's hard Cus I randomly spot and bleed all the time (always have) so tracking ovulation seems difficult 😬 only time will tell!

the app won't really know when you ovulate...it does it based on most likely day but people vary and even the same person sometimes varies in different months.

If you've just had the coil out it may take a few months for cycles to settle down and to ovulate regularly but in the meantime don't put too much pressure on yourself and just have fun!

@Bells3032

you can only fall pregnant when ovulating. however, two main caveats:

1. sperm can live for up to 5 days and the egg for up to 24 hours so you can get pregnant even if you haven't had sex on day of ovulation
2. some people ovulate at weird times of the month and not always on day 14 etc I got pregnant it seems i ovulated sometime between day 21 and day 25 of my cycle that month. So unless you're stringently checking you won't know when you're ovulated and even then the tests only give a positive respond accurately 1-2 days before ovulation (so if you've had sex the day before you can get pregnant).

This. Exactly this 100%

My coil was copper so thankfully non hormonal, theoretically I should be able to conceive rather quickly as I'm not waiting for additional hormones to leave my system like I was before when I was on the pill. I'll try not to think about it too much tho, it's just hard to distract myself, every night I have a different dream about pregnancy in some way or another and then I wake up and realise I've only just started trying 😂 v disappointing

I'm going to have sex every day

Assuming you have 1 male partner.....it is actually better chance to fall pregnant if you have sex every other day or 1 in 3 days because sex every day lowers both sperm count and sperm swimming strength in the man.

Does it?? I didn't know that, damn it this is so tricky to navigate 😂