Improving your Chances of Getting Pregnant

What are the chances of getting pregnant?
For the average couple, not using contraception the chances of falling pregnant in any given month are about 30%. For the same couple, if they continue to try and get pregnant for a year, there is a 90% chance that it will happen within that year. This means that there is a 1:10 chance that a couple will not get pregnant after a year of trying. This 10% of couples would have what doctors would consider to "a fertility problem".


What things can make it harder to get pregnant?
Lifestyle, living an unhealthy lifestyle can reduce your chances of getting pregnant; smoking, drinking, drug use, poor diet and stress are all things for both men and women to avoid.
Age, as a woman gets older her chances of falling pregnant get less, this is particularly true as she approaches 40. Having sex at the wrong time in the cycle. It is important to have sex at the time when you are most likely to get egg and sperm together.


Dispelling the myths.
Having an abortion does NOT affect your chance of getting pregnant in the future. An abortion does not affect a woman's fertility. In fact a woman who has been through this procedure has a higher chance of getting pregnant in the future as she has already proved that she can conceive.
Being on the contraceptive pill for a long time does NOT affects fertility. Fertility returns within 2 weeks of stopping the pill, even if it has been taken for many years. (Though it is true it can take up to a year to fall pregnant after coming off the depo contraceptive injection)


Picking the right time of the month to have sex.
Sperm live for a maximum of 5 days and the egg has a maximum life of 48 hours. This means that there are only 7 days of the cycle when a woman can get pregnant. The highest chances are in the couple of days around when a woman ovulates. There are a number of ways to predict the day of ovulation. The three most effective ones follow.
1. Timing. A woman will always ovulate 14 days before her period. If you have a regular cycle you can work out your ovulation day by subtracting 14 from the length of your cycle. For instance in a 28 day cycle ovulation will occur on day 14, and in a 35 day cycle it will occur on day 21. 2. Mucus changes. Mucus produced by the cervix changes throughout the month, just before ovulation it becomes very stretchy and profuse, looking like egg white. This is the best time to have sex. 3. Ovulation prediction kits. These use changes in hormone levels to predict when ovulation will happen.