How Conception and Pregnancy Really Happens (And How to Interrupt It)

One of the biggest collective myths we’ve inherited about our fertility is that pregnancy is possible at any time. 

Here’s the myth busting truth: you are only fertile for 6 days of your cycle! 

You are NOT able to conceive every day— contrary to what you learned from Mean Girls, or just about any other sex ed.

Here’s why you can only conceive 6 days per cycle. 

✨ 1. Cervical mucus can keep sperm alive for up to five days. 

Normally, the vagina is an acidic environment.

In addition to keeping our pH balanced and supporting helpful bacteria, the acidic environment is also hostile to sperm! 

As estrogen rises in our cycle as we near ovulation, we produce cervical mucus.

This is the healthy, normal fluid you might see when you wipe, or on your underwear — it can be sticky, creamy/lotion like, stretchy like egg white, or watery.

This fluid is more alkaline, and keeps sperm alive for up to 5 days, so that there might be a chance for an egg to get fertilized— which can only happen after ovulation.

✨ 2. Ovulation occurs on one day of the menstrual cycle— and an egg can live for up to 24 hours! 

When we ovulate, an egg bursts through the ovary and travels down the egg (aka fallopian) tube. 

If there was sperm waiting in the cervical mucus, this is when fertilization can occur, in the egg tube! 

While you were likely taught or came to believe that pregnancy is always a possibility, this simply isn’t grounded in biological reality. 

What IS true is that identifying when your fertile window is, is different for everyone— and that’s why body literacy is key! 

While there are only 6 days per cycle when you can conceive, when practicing fertility awareness, how many days you have to consider yourself fertile will depend on your signs— particularly, cervical mucus and basal body temperature. 

To learn how to track this, check out my free fertility awareness 101 workshop here.

Now, here’s where it gets really cool…

❗️you are not pregnant as soon as you’ve had s e x! ❗️

Let’s talk how (and when) pregnancy actually occurs. 

Fertilization of an egg occurs 12-24 hours after ovulation,  in the egg tube (aka fallopian tube), where sperm and egg meet.

As we talked about last week, sperm are viable for up to 5 days in the presence of cervical mucus, so they can be hanging around waiting for ovulation to occur!

If fertilization occurs, the egg (first called a zygote, then a blastocyst) still has to travel the rest of the way down the egg tube to the uterus, where it can implant in the uterine lining. 

From a legal perspective, pregnancy is considered to begin at implantation, not before.

This is pretty cool because it means the whole process from s e x to pregnancy takes 6-12 days, minimum!

Yep, that means 1-2 WEEKS of magical time, where you have the power to avoid a pregnancy.

So how do you do that?!

In my work, this looks like using herbs and practices to:

🩸Encourage menstruation through circulation and agitating the uterine lining

🩸Disrupt progesterone, which thins that cushy endometrial lining so a fertilized egg can’t implant 

🩸 Increase oxytocin, to support the uterus to contract and bleed

…and, if we know about how our hormones work, we can also use this to support our chances of pregnancy — more on that soon!

Please note, right now we’re NOT talking about a b o r t i o n. 

We’re talking about using radical body literacy to influence our womb’s environment to avoid a potential pregnancy.

When you consider that you’re only fertile 6 days per cycle, and you have a 1-2 week grace period to interrupt a potential pregnancy… doesn’t it seem wild that so many of us spend years, if not decades, on continuous hormones to avoid pregnancy?

If you want to live this, know this, and share this wisdom, apply to work with me in my year-long container for Womb Sovereignty.