Pregnancy Signs & Symptoms, Week by Week Pregnancy Guide

There are a lot of women asking can you get pregnant after ovulation.

The truth is that in order to fully understand the answer you should know more about ovulation. To keep it short, yes, you can get pregnant after ovulation, but for a short period of time only.

Know more about the ovulation process

Simply put, ovulation is the process during which there is a mature egg released from the ovaries. This mature egg travels to the fallopian tube and here it waits to be fertilized. Generally speaking, the menstrual cycles of women last for 28 days and ovulation is supposed to happen on the 14^th day.

After the process of ovulation the egg can be fertilized by sperm for 12-24 hours. After this it starts to disintegrate. This period is known as the fertile window and this is the time when women have the highest chances of getting pregnant if they have intercourse without any protection.

The moment of ovulation in your menstrual cycle is based on the luteal phase. This usually lasts for 12-16 days. This means that you can calculate when you have your ovulation if you subtract the length of the luteal phase of the total length of your menstrual cycle.

For instance, when it comes to the ovulation moment, if your menstrual cycle lasts for 28 days and the luteal phase lasts for 12 days, it means that you have your ovulation on the 16^th day of your menstrual cycle. The truth is that the time when your ovulation occurs varies from one cycle to the other even in case of regular periods.

When asking how long after ovulation can you get pregnant, you should remember that there are a lot of factors that can influence your ovulation. These include illness, stress, increased physical activity, diet and also the disruption of your regular daily activities.

How could you get pregnant after ovulation?

If you would like to conceive, it is best if you have intercourse before your ovulation. This is because your chances of conception are higher if there is sperm waiting for the egg when it is released by the ovaries. Also don’t forget that the egg can be fertilized for 12-24 hours after it has been released.

This means that fertilization after ovulation is possible if sperm gets to the egg in that short period of time. After this time your chances of conception decrease dramatically.

All this means that you could conceive after ovulation, but if you would like to get pregnant it is best to maximize your chances of a pregnancy and have intercourse even before ovulation. The best thing you could do is to find the pattern of ovulation to be able to make predictions.

As you can see the answer to the question can you get pregnant before ovulation is yes in the majority of the cases, but the time frame for which this is possible is very short, so you don’t want to rely on that to get pregnant.