Take your time with this information
Overview
If you are just starting to think about your journey to parenthood, or you've already started trying, congratulations!
This is an exciting chapter for couples, but it may also bring feelings of anxiety of the unknown. In this section you'll find information on what to expect from trying to get pregnant, what the 'fertile window' really means, what is normal and expected during pregnancy, and when to seek medical care.
Time-To-Conception Basics
When trying to conceive, you may wonder how long it might take. For some couples, it can happen very quickly, for others it may take longer. On average, a healthy couple with no fertility issues has around a 25% chance of conceiving each month when having regular, unprotected sexual intercourse.1
This means that on average, if aged under 40 years old, around 8 in 10 couples will conceive within a year of actively trying.2
This is perfectly normal because there is much more to conception than the act of sexual intercourse, it is dependent on many other factors including age, lifestyle, overall health and wellbeing, and how regularly you're having sex during the fertile window.3
Getting to know your body and finding its rhythm can help support your journey to conception.
Conception, on the face of it, is an uncomplicated process involving two people where sperm meets egg. But understanding the process in finer detail, may help you understand how timing is everything!
For conception to occur, a couple must have unprotected sexual intercourse, during which the male partner will ejaculate sperm in the vagina high up near the cervix. The sperm are shaped with long tails that allow them to swim up through the cervix into the womb and towards the fallopian tubes.4
In each ejaculate, there are millions of sperm, but due to the environment in the vagina and womb, in addition to the quality of the sperm cells, the number of sperm reaching the fallopian tubes can reduce from the millions to between 10–1000.5
Sperm can typically survive for between 3–5 days after ejaculation, so co-ordinating the timing of sexual intercourse around ovulation for sperm to have access to the egg is crucial for successful conception.6
This crucial window for conception is called the Fertile Window.