Using an ovulation calendar can be a valuable tool in helping most couples pinpoint fertile days and achieve pregnancy as soon as they are ready to have a baby. An ovulation calendar for pregnancy helps to take out the guesswork of figuring out when a woman will ovulate, identifying the best days for the couple to have intercourse in order to get pregnant.
Time Frame
Couples trying to get pregnant should become aware of the different aspects of the woman's menstrual cycle in the months before they attempt to conceive. The information needed to create an accurate ovulation calendar for pregnancy includes the average length of her menstrual cycle, the average length of the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle and the beginning dates of each period. Once a couple has a record of this information they can begin to understand the overall dynamics of the woman's menstrual cycle and will be better prepared to come up with an ovulation calendar.
Function
An ovulation calendar uses information based on a woman's previous menstrual cycles and predicts ovulation, fertile days and the dates of the period for that cycle. Couples can use the data from the ovulation calendar to optimally time intercourse in order to achieve pregnancy.
Features
Couples can create an ovulation calendar on paper, but it is much easier to use the many online ovulation calendar calculators. These ovulation calendars are typically free and simply require the user to enter information like the date of the start of the last menstrual cycle, the average length of the menstrual cycle and the average length of the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle. This information is then used to map out the ovulation calendar for that month, including the anticipated date of ovulation, the dates surrounding ovulation that are also likely to be fertile days, and the date of the start of the woman's next period should she not conceive.
Benefits
Women generally ovulate somewhere between days 11 and 21 of their menstrual cycle and the luteal phase is the name for the days between ovulation and the start of the next period. An ovulation calendar for pregnancy is a useful tool because it takes each woman's own unique cycle and makes personalized predictions of ovulation based on this information. Many women may think that they ovulate on day 14 of their cycle since this is the date of ovulation for a "typical" 28-day cycle, but few women have this standard menstrual cycle. This misunderstanding can lead to poorly timed intercourse for conception. Women who do not have typical cycles can input their own cycle information to create an ovulation calendar for pregnancy that reflects their cycle and will help to increase their chances for pregnancy.
Considerations
While an ovulation calendar can be a useful tool in determining ovulation and fertile days, women can only identify estimated dates based off of the average of previous cycles. Women with highly varying cycles may not benefit from an ovulation calendar because their ovulation dates may be very different from cycle to cycle. However, the luteal phase occurring between ovulation and the start of the next period is usually the same each cycle despite ovulation variances, so if a women can determine the luteal phase length (usually by temperature or mucus charting) she can still calculate a reasonably accurate ovulation calendar.
Tags: ovulation calendar, menstrual cycle, luteal phase, average length, fertile days, ovulation calendar, ovulation calendar pregnancy