Conception is the time when the egg and sperm meet. It can take anything from 45 minutes to 12 hours for a sperm to approach your fallopian tubes – where conception usually occurs. However, sperm can survive inside your body for up to seven days. So, conception can occur at any point in the week after sex if you are ovulating.
Let’s learn more about this amazing journey, and how life starts!
What occurs while you are having sex
In addition to all the fun, your body is establishing the tension that you hope will end in orgasm. Having an orgasm also has an essential biological function. In men, orgasm pushes sperm-rich semen into the vagina and up towards the cervix at roughly 16km per hour. The force of ejaculation gives the sperms a good head start on their way to the egg. A woman does not need to orgasm for conception to take place. Slight uterine contractions can help the sperm along, but these occur without you having an orgasm.
Many couples wonder if a specific sex position is best for conceiving. No one can be sure. The most important thing about sex is that you are both having a good time and you are doing it often enough. In order to conceive, live sperms need to be in your reproductive tract ovulation. Not all women ovulate throughout the middle of their cycle or in their cycle each month simultaneously. To improve your opportunity of conception, aim to have sex every other day or so during your cycle.
While you relax, the sperm’s job is just starting.
At this point, you can cross your fingers and hope that you conceive. While you and your partner have a relaxing post-sex cuddle, a lot is going on inside your body. Those millions of sperms have started their search to find your egg and it is not a simple journey. The first barrier may be your cervical mucus which can seem like an impenetrable net on your non-fertile days. Once you are most fertile, however, it incredibly loosens up so the strongest swimmers can pass.
The sperms that stay alive still have a long road ahead. They need to go about 18cm from the cervix through the uterus to the fallopian tubes. The fastest swimmers may take as little as 45 minutes to find the egg and the slowest one may need up to 12 hours. If the sperms do not find an egg in the fallopian tubes at the time of intercourse, they can stay alive inside you for up to seven days. This means that if you ovulate during this time window, you could still conceive.
The death rate for sperms is very high and only a few dozen ever make it to the egg. For the fortunate few that get near the egg, the race still continues. Each one has to work frantically to enter the egg’s outer shell and get inside before the others. The egg needs to be fertilized within 24 hours of its release. When the best sperm of the bunch makes it, the egg changes instantaneously to avoid any other invasion. You can imagine a protective shield clamping down over the egg at the exact moment the first sperm gets inside safely.
Now a new life is created
Throughout the fertilization, the genetic material in the sperm and egg combine to form a new cell that will rapidly begin dividing. This bundle of new cells is called the blastocyst. It keeps traveling down the fallopian tube towards the uterus – a journey which can take up to three days or so. You do not actually get pregnant until the blastocyst has attached itself to the wall of your uterus where it will develop into an embryo and placenta. Sometimes, the blastocyst will implant somewhere other than the uterus (normally in the fallopian tube). This is known as an ectopic pregnancy, which is a medical emergency. The fertilized egg will not stay alive outside the uterus and needs to be completely eliminated to prevent damage to the fallopian tube.
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