Problems Getting Pregnant or Are You Being Misdiagnosed?

As a couple with a problem getting pregnant, it is of the utmost importance that you fully understand what it takes to achieve a conception.

When a woman is ovulating and the egg is expelled from the ovarian wall it will be picked up by the waiting fallopian tube. Within seconds, the fimbria (the end of the fallopian tube) will snatch the egg up and draw it inside the tube. If an egg remains unfertilised it can live for up to twenty four hours, and after dying it will be absorbed by the body or it will disintegrate and come out with the menses. To put it in perspective, the size of the egg is about as big as a full stop – like this one.

If there is success and fertilisation occurs this will actually take place in the fallopian tube. This is against the popular misconception that fertilisation takes place inside the uterus. It can take even a couple of hours for the sperm to reach the egg in the fallopian tubes. Once an egg has been fertilised there are vibrating, tiny hairs called cilia which draw the egg back into the uterus. The fertilised ovum will reach its final destination and begin to burrow into the nutritious lining of the uterus after about one week of ‘travelling’ to reach there.

If you are experiencing a problem getting pregnant then you need to remember that there are three things that make a pregnancy happen, not just the sperm and egg – the third ingredient is a safe medium for them both to travel is, as without this conduit the vagina is a very hostile environment for the little sperms to tackle.

This medium which affords safe passage to the sperm and egg is an eggwhite-like cervical fluid which is especially fertile. It is this cervical mucus that is the safe passage of the sperm into the cervix and the waiting egg. This special fertile-quality cervical fluid is produced under the increasing levels of oestrogen during the first part of the menstrual cycle, with the optimum being produced during ovulation. In this type of cervical fluid, sperm can survive inside for up to five days – so it is entirely possible to have intercourse at the beginning of the week, and not become pregnant till the end of the week!

As it would be a total disaster for a pregnant body if the lining of the uterus were to disintegrate as it usually does in normal cycles, the body does an amazing trick and stops this from happening. When a fertilised egg burrows into the lining of the uterus, the body starts producing a hormone called Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG) which prevents this from happening. This hormone sends a message directly to the corpus luteum (fancy for the lining of the uterus) and tells it to keep on kicking for a while longer. This will continue on for a couple of months, or until the placenta is ready to relieve the corpus luteum of its job, after which it is the placenta which keeps the lining alive, whilst also providing the nutrients and oxygen that the tiny foetus needs to grow.

False -negative pregnancy tests occur when the test is done too soon, because it can take so long for an egg to burrow into the lining and start producing HCG, which is what is measured in a pregnancy test. If a woman is charting her cycle, and even charting her cervical fluids, then these kind of false-negative results are unlikely to occur, because she will know the rhythm of ovulation, and therefore will know more accurately when implantation has occurred.

When couples are having a problem getting pregnant it really is vital that they fully understand the process involved in getting pregnant, because unlike what our mums tell us as youths, for some getting pregnant is not that easy.