Questions about Ovulation Answered
As a fertility awareness educator, I talk a lot about ovulation with my clients. In this article, I’ll be answering some of the most common questions I get about ovulation.
Why is ovulation important?
How do you know the day you’ve ovulated? Predicting ovulation vs. confirming ovulation.
How many days after your period do you ovulate?
How long does ovulation last?
When do I ovulate if I have an irregular cycle?
Why would someone not be ovulating?
#1. Why is ovulation important?
Ovulation — when the egg is released from the ovary and gets swept into one of the uterine tubes — is how a pregnancy can occur. But ovulation isn’t just beneficial for pregnancy, it actually indicates and creates health. Ovulation supports both our short term and long term health.
Ovulation adds beneficial hormones to your body that add up over time. It’s one of the only ways to get estradiol and progesterone in your body. These hormones support mood, energy levels, libido, insulin response, thyroid function, skin, hair, muscle gain, reduce inflammation, immunity, prevent cancers, support brain function, and more.
Each time you ovulate, your body makes these hormones that add up over time to support a healthy future. Each ovulation builds a reserve of strength for your bones, brain, heart, and overall wellness.
Ovulation is a sign that your body has what it needs (aka extra energy and fuel) to put towards reproduction vs. survival. So even if you don't want to get pregnant, ovulation is still worth doing.
#2. How do you know the day you’ve ovulated?
Predicting Ovulation vs. Confirming Ovulation
The only way you can know exactly when your ovulating is to have an ultrasound at the exact time of ovulation, which doesn’t really work for most of us. So what’s the next best thing? You can predicted when you are close to ovulation, and then you can confirm that you’ve actually ovulated.
To reiterate, unless you have an ultrasound on your ovary at the time of ovulation or just after, you won’t know the exact time of ovulation- but that’s okay! Because there are other ways to understand ovulation.
There are a few ways that you can predict when you are getting close to ovulation.
#1 Cervical fluid
When your cervical fluid is slippery, watery, clear or stretchy, you are likely close to ovulation. In a study of self-determine peak day (aka the last day of this type of fluid), ~30% of people ovulated on self-identified peak day and ~90% of people ovulation within + or - 1 day of peak day.
#2 Urine metabolites
You can use either LH strips (aka OPKs) or a high tech device like Mira. Unfortunately, LH strips can be confusing to interpret, you can miss your LH surge which typically happens over night or early in the morning, and just because you’ve had a surge doesn’t mean you’re actually going to ovulate. A mira device that tests a variety of sex hormone metabolites in the urine can be more accurate. Tracking these metabolites can show you quantity of LH and also the rising level of estrogens which contribute to ovulation.
If you actually want to confirm that you’ve ovulated in your cycle, that’s where tracking your basal body temperature (BBT) comes into play. Your BBT (that’s your temperature at absolute rest aka first thing in the morning when you wake up) changes by .2-1 degrees F after you ovulate. So by taking your BBT every morning, you can confirm that you’ve ovulated after you see a temperature shift.
If you want to learn more about tracking your BBT and ovulation, check out my mini course HERE.
Predicting Ovulation
VS.
Confirming Ovulation
How do you know when you're getting close to ovulation?
you are seeing cervical fluid (fluid that comes out of the vaginal canal that is slippery, watery, stretchy, or clear)
If you are taking your basal body temperature, you’ll notice lower temperatures
What are the signs that you may have ovulated?
Again the presence of cervical fluid Getting your period 12-15 days after presence of cervical fluid, but there is a chance that your period isn’t a TRUE period and could be a withdrawal bleed
positive LH strip (again doesn’t confirm that you’ve ovulated, just that your body is trying to ovulate)
How can you confirm that you’ve ovulated?
A temperature shift AND high sustained temperatures that stay above your coverline for 12-16 days, followed by your period
Serum progesterone levels via blood test 5-7 days post ovulation
Sustained levels of urine metabolite of progesterone
An ultrasound that shows the presence of the corpus luteum (aka the empty follicle that held the egg)
#3. How many days after your period do you ovulate?
This is such a common question! The answer is that we don’t have all the same length cycles, more specifically the follicular phase, so using a standard calculator to calculate the time of ovulation, unfortunately, doesn’t work for a majority of us.
Most of the clinical information on menstrual cycle length is based on the 28 day cycle, which is true for about 16-18% of us (1.). Cycle lengths can actually range anywhere from 26 to 34 days and longer. Longer and irregular cycles can happen due to stress, being postpartum, PCOS (aka metabolic reproductive syndrome), coming off hormonal birth control, having a chronic illness and more.
In a study of 69 cycles that were the typical 28 days, ovulation occurred on cycle day 14 only 10% of the time (2). What’s more is that only about 30% of women have their fertile window within the days determined by clinical guidelines, which is between days 10 and 17.(2.) Most women either have their fertile window earlier or much later. That means relying on the clinical guidelines for fertility, and trying to count our way to our fertile window/ovulation may not work for the majority of us.
How should we remedy this? If you’re serious of getting pregnant or not getting pregnant, DO NOT use a calculation method to predict ovulation.
Other options may be Natural Cycles- a predictive app (cleared by the FDA as a birth control device). One of the downsides about Natural Cycles is that it only gives you red or green days which doesn’t give you any information about ovulation and the health of your cycles.
You could use a predictive fem tech device, such as the Temp Drop (not cleared for birth control use) which uses a wearable device to take your basal body temperature, however you’ll need to pay extra to access the prediction data. You can use my affiliate link here to get a 15% off discount.
OR you can use a urine metabolite device such as Mira (which is also not cleared for birth control use).
Finally, you could learn how to track your cycle using fertility awareness to accurately predict and confirm ovulation by using the natural signs of how your body changes before or after ovulation. Check out my cycle tracking courses here.
Grieger JA, Norman RJ. Menstrual Cycle Length and Patterns in a Global Cohort of Women Using a Mobile Phone App: Retrospective Cohort Study. J Med Internet Res. 2020 Jun 24;22(6):e17109. doi: 10.2196/17109. PMID: 32442161; PMCID: PMC7381001.
Wilcox AJ, Dunson D, Baird DD. The timing of the "fertile window" in the menstrual cycle: day specific estimates from a prospective study. BMJ. 2000 Nov 18;321(7271):1259-62. doi: 10.1136/bmj.321.7271.1259. PMID: 11082086; PMCID: PMC27529.
#4. How long does ovulation last?
The lifespan of an egg lasts for 12-24 hours. Technically ovulation occurs once the egg leaves the ovary, but I think what people are really wanting to know when they ask this question is: How long does an egg live for? How viable is an egg after it is ovulated? How long is my fertile window to get pregnant?
1 egg can live for 12-24 hours but within that time another egg can be released- hello fraternal twins happen! There could be egg(s) present for up to a max of 48 hours, unless you are participating in assisted reproductive technology which requires you to use synthetic hormones.
What’s even more interesting is that if we were only fertile for the lifespan of an egg, it would be very difficult for our species to reproduce. So what our body does to make sure our species survives, is it extends the fertile window by producing cervical fluid.
Cervical fluid is produced from the cervix and it continues nourishment to keep sperm alive, it’s a medium that helps sperm travel to the egg, and it also keeps the environment of the vaginal more basic in pH to keep the sperm alive.
When cervical fluid is present in the female body our fertility is extended by keeping sperm alive for up to 5 days, until the egg is released.
You aren’t just fertile during ovulation, you’re fertile any day of your cycle that you produce cervical fluid. This is important for both fertility and birth control. Many people claim that women are only fertile for 6 days of the menstrual cycle, and while this could be true for some women, it’s not true for everyone. The fertile window may be shorter or longer than this depending upon your body, hormonal balance, and where you are in life.
To be CLEAR- any day you produce cervical fluid, you are potentially fertile. Knowing and understanding your cycle will help you achieve your goals no matter what they are. Check out my course for natural birth control.
#5. When do I ovulate if I have an irregular cycle?
This is a little more challenging because:
Ovulation calculators will be incorrect because you won’t know how many days this current cycle will be
You’ll get more red days if you’re using Natural Cycles
LH strip testing will be challenging because you could easily miss your LH surge and LH production doesn’t indicate that ovulation has actually happened
Using fem tech devices, like Mira, will be more expensive because you’ll have to buy a lot of extra strips
If you’re using other predictive apps to track your cycle they might say that you’re close to ovulation for days on end or straight up get it wrong.
My answer to this question depends on why you want to track ovulation.
If you are trying to get pregnant and time is of the essence, you’ll either want to use a device like Mira which tests your hormone metabolites in urine or learn the sympto-thermal fertility awareness method (the one that I teach). In the sympto-thermal method, you’ll learn how to track your cervical fluid which shows when ovulation is approaching, and how to confirm that ovulation has happened with your basal body temperature.
If you want to understand ovulation for birth control and you have an irregular cycle, apps like natural cycles (the only FDA cleared app for birth control on the market) will likely give you a ton of red days which may be fine with you or you may want more freedom, so learning how to track your cycle using a sympto-thermal method of fertility awareness AND working with an fertility awareness educator will be the best choice. When you work closely with an educator (which you absolutely should if you have irregular cycles- because they can make things more complication) you can come up with your own guidelines for birth control based on your cervical fluid patterns giving you more flexibility in your sex life.
If you want to understand your ovulation for health and hormonal reasons, tracking your cycle using a fertility awareness method, will give you the most accurate insights on your follicular phase length and luteal phase length so you can:
easily determine if you’re ovulating or not
understand how your symptoms are tied to your hormones
identify where in your cycle your symptoms are occurring which can help you figure out what’s going on
have data to see if any of the interventions/changes your making are actually affecting helping heal your symptoms
have data that you can bring to your doctor to advocate for specific support, such as lab tests or a referral to a specialists (doctors loveee DATA!)
#6. Why would someone NOT ovulate?
There are normal reasons why we don’t ovulation and reasons that could indicate some imbalances are going on with our health.
Normal reasons why you may not be ovulating (aka having anovulatory menstrual cycles):
You just started your cycle as a pre(teen). We know that it can take more than 2 years for our cycles to normalize at this age
You’re pregnant!
You’re postpartum. The body takes time to find its hormonal rhythm again after all the pregnancy hormones
If you’re nursing and producing lactation hormones- prolactin dims down estrogen which is what tells our body we’re ready to ovulate
If you’re perimenopausal and transitioning into the menopause which can sometimes take up to 10 years so you’ll have both longer and shorter cycles at this time.
You’re taking hormonal birth control, which almost always will stop ovulation from happening— that’s how it works to prevent pregnancy.
Reasons why someone may not be ovulating that could indicate a need for some health support
Hormonal imbalances resulting from things like PCOS which is also referred to as metabolic reproductive syndrome. This can cause someone to have longer cycles and thus delayed ovulation
Hypothyroidism
Gut dysbiosis
Adrenal fatigue & dysregulation
Restrictive dieting or disordered eating
Over exercising
Other chronic illness and infections that can put increased stress on the body
Times of acute stress (even the good things like a wedding, new job, or travel) could cause someone to not ovulate
Do you have more questions about ovulation?