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What Is Ovulation? 6 Sensational Facts About Ovulation Cycle

Ovulation facts

What is ovulation? This question usually arises when women begin to investigate how to prevent pregnancy in a natural way, or, on the contrary, increase the chances for pregnancy. Pregnancy and ovulation are closely related, as pregnancy can occur only during specific days, associated with ovulation. It’s always useful to know when exactly you ovulate every month. Let’s look into ovulation in greater detail.

What Is Ovulation and Why Do We Need to Know Its Date?

Ovulation is a stage of menstrual cycle, when a mature ovum, ready for impregnation, is released by an ovarian follicle into the Fallopian tube in order to get fertilized by a sperm cell and give start to a new life.

There are hundreds of immature ovums in the female organism, because a girl is naturally born with them. Within a time span from puberty until menopause every month one ovum cell is maturing and ovulation occurs. The released ovum can be fertilized only during the next 48 hours. Moreover, every month female organism is preparing to accept the fertilized ovum which causes certain inner changes. This is what menstrual cycle is about. Determining ovulation cycle has two global goals – to catch a favorable moment for conception or prevent undesired pregnancy.

Interesting Ovulation Facts

  1. Ovulation divides menstrual cycle into 2 phases: a phase of follicular maturing, that lasts 10-16 days for the cycles with the average length, and luteal phase (a phase of the yellow body) which is stable and doesn’t depend on the length of menstrual cycle (12-16 days). Luteal phase is referred to the period of absolute infertility. It starts 1-2 days after ovulation and finishes when menstrual bleeding begins. You can use this information for natural contraception.
  2. Different women may have absolutely different ovulation terms. Even one woman may not have ovulation on the same specific day every month. Some women tend to have particularly irregular ovulation cycles. In some cases cycles can be longer or shorter than average 14 days. In rare cases in women with extremely short menstrual cycle ovulation occurs approximately in the end of menstruation. However, most often ovulation is still regular.
  3. Growth of ovarian follicles, containing ovum cells, occurs not only in women, who have reached their reproductive age. This is a regular physiological process, observable in children, newborns and even female fetuses during the last months of their fetal development. With age the number of growing follicles increases, while the number of primal follicles considerably drops. Initially the ovaries contain a sensational number of follicles – about 30 000 in each ovary!
  4. A possibility to conceive is the highest on the ovulation day – about 33%. High chances are also promised for the day before ovulation – 31%. Two days before ovulation you also have a good opportunity to get pregnant – 27%. 5 days before ovulation the probability to conceive is 10%, 4 days provide 14% and 3 days – 16%. 6 days prior to ovulation and 1 day after it chances to get pregnant are quite low.
  5. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in North Carolina has conducted researches which proved that gender of your future baby depends on the day of ovulation cycle, when conception has occurred. Thus, you have chances to plan your baby’s gender. Thrilling information, isn’t it?
  6. Women, who are working on basal body temperature charts, some months get a chart that doesn’t reflect any temperature leaps in the middle of the cycle, characteristic for ovulation. That causes much panic and misleading conclusions about infertility. Meanwhile, it’s known that not all the cyclic changes in the ovaries result in production of a mature follicle and ovulation. There are also anovulatary cycles: up to 3 menstrual cycles within a year can be anovulatory in healthy women. The highest frequency of anovulatory cycles is typical for the beginning and the end of reproductive age, i.e. in puberty and premenopause. Ovulation in healthy women may be oppressed under stressful circumstances and due to strict diets.

“What is ovulation?” is not an idle question from the school course of biology. Actually, being aware or unaware of all the minute details of the process may change your life, as what can be more important in the woman’s life than becoming a mother? Now that you know more about ovulation, use your knowledge in order to plan your pregnancy wisely.