Lets take it from the top...

We all know how babies are made...well I hope you do otherwise you're going to have a hard time TTC! But after writing the piece about ovulation where you only have a small window of time to conceive in the month, it made me remember what I'd read on the probability of a single sperm fertilising the egg. So I thought why not take it from the top:

So hopefully my last piece gave you a little bit more insight on the perfect timing when TTC. Do you know that men can ejaculate up to 250million sperm in the one go?! A single sperm has a short and fraught life — and it's highly unlikely it will ever achieve its goal of fertilising an egg! Not only do these sperm have to survive ejaculation and be competent swimmers with a sense of direction, they have to navigate through a virtual minefield of obstacles planted by the woman's body.

The survival rate of sperm on the journey to the uterus is extremely low. The sperm make this journey by swimming — they move at a rate of about 3mm a minute. The journey from the cervix to the ovum takes several hours. Once a sperm is in the uterus or fallopian tubes, it can live for up to five days. Conception can occur any time during this period. Of the hundreds of millions of sperm ejaculated, only a few thousand make it into the uterus — and only about 50 of these actually survive to reach the egg. 50 out of 250 million!!!

Throughout most of a woman's monthly cycle, the cervix is plugged by a thick CM that sperm find difficult to get through. Only at ovulation does the cervix become more receptive to the millions of sperm knocking on the door. But just because they've entered the uterus doesn't mean the sperm will have an easy ride from then on: they have to swim deep into the uterus for the openings to the fallopian tubes — which many of them will never find, dying or getting lost instead (of course they wouldn't stop to ask for directions would they?!). Once at the "pot of gold" the handful of survivors swarm the egg. Finally, if all goes well and conception happens, one lucky sperm penetrates the egg and fertilisation occurs, shutting out any other sperm.

Wow. It just goes to show that getting pregnant really is a miracle. I hope my hubby has fast swimmers!!

Thanks for reading!

Mandi O xx