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Ovulation & Family Planning

Overview

Ovulation occurs when a woman's body releases a mature egg from the ovaries, and that egg travels down the fallopian tube, where it becomes available to be fertilized. Knowing whether and when you ovulate is key to natural family planning, whether you are trying to conceive or trying to avoid getting pregnant.
Working With Your Body

Couples who want to conceive should have intercourse in the 24 to 48 hours following ovulation. Couples who want to avoid getting pregnant should either avoid intercourse or use barrier methods of contraception, like condoms, for a nine- to 10-day period surrounding ovulation. A woman can learn exactly when this "fertile period" occurs by using the "fertility awareness method" of birth control, which involves charting waking temperature, the quality of cervical mucus and cervical position over the entire menstrual cycle. Using these signs, a woman can determine when she is fertile. Cervical mucus will be the consistency of egg white and the cervix will be higher and more open during the fertile period. After the fertile period, temperature will rise noticeably. After months of charting, these signs become a pattern.

When Ovulation Happens

Ovulation happens in the middle of a woman's menstrual cycle. Many doctors will tell you that, in general, most women ovulate on day 14 of a 28-day menstrual cycle. However, as Toni Weschler has written in "Taking Charge of Your Fertility," a book on natural family planning, you should not assume that you are going to ovulate on day 14. This is because the length of a woman's menstrual cycle can vary widely, from as little as 22 or 23 days to as many as 38 or 40 days.
Pinpointing Ovulation

Many methods exist for pinpointing when a woman ovulates. Weschler advocates the fertility awareness method, where a woman takes her temperature each morning and monitors her cervical mucus and the position of her cervix to pinpoint the event. In addition to this method, you can buy ovulation predictor kits at most pharmacies that will give you an estimate of when you ovulate. More advanced products available over the counter in drugstores include a fertility monitor that analyzes urine samples each morning to tell you what day you ovulate, and what other days you are fertile. The only way to determine with 100 percent certainty when you are ovulating is to see it in an ultrasound image at your doctor's office.
Considerations

Ovulation predictor kits can be misleading at times, as Weschler has written. Most of these tests look for luteinizing hormone in a woman's urine. This is a hormone that usually surges before ovulation. However, if your levels of this hormone do not rise high enough to register on the test, it may not show that you have ovulated, even if you have. Also, a woman must test right around ovulation to catch the rise in this hormone. This means that kits that only include seven tests or fewer for each month could easily miss a woman's ovulation. For these reasons, it is smart to monitor temperature in addition to using a predictor kit to try to pinpoint ovulation.
Be aware

You can have regular periods and not be ovulating. Similarly, according to the American Pregnancy Association, you can ovulate but not have regular periods. It is important to educate yourself about how your body works if you want to use natural family planning methods to achieve or avoid pregnancy. If you have tried to pinpoint your ovulation but cannot seem to do so, consult your doctor about ways to explore this further.