Tin can you get meaning right before your menstruum? This is a frequently-Googled period question, the answer to which hinges on promise or relief depending on whether or not y'all're aiming to conceive.

So let'due south break it down. Simply first let'south analyze some words:

  • "Getting significant" = sperm + egg. Pregnancy starts when your egg fuses with a sperm cell—a process chosen fertilization. It's not technically considered a 'pregnancy' until the fertilized egg nestles into the lining of the uterus and starts growing—a process chosen implantation.
  • "Right before" = sometime during your luteal stage—the 10 to 16 days between ovulation and your period, when PMS happens.
  • "Your menses" = the shedding of your uterine lining, indicating that no fertilized egg has cozied into it, and y'all aren't pregnant.

Tin yous get pregnant correct before your period?

It'south very unlikely. (*but there are exceptions, see beneath.)

You lot can only go significant during your fertile window —the six or so days per menstrual bike that you're fertile. Your fertile window occurs before and during ovulation—when your ovaries release an egg.

It only takes a few minutes to release an egg from your ovary. Once released, your egg has almost 24 hours to live. Your fertile window is six days long, rather than just those 24 hours, because sperm tin survive in the uterus for up to 5 days, ready to fertilize an egg should one be ovulated.

You lot only ovulate one time per menstrual bicycle. (In rare cases, yous may release more than one egg per ovulatory episode, and may conceive twins. But then you cannot ovulate over again until next your bike.)

It's typical to ovulate effectually day fourteen of your cycle (nigh xiv days later on the first day of your period). But this is but the norm, not the dominion.

Ovulation is e'er followed past a luteal phase lasting about ii weeks, followed by a period (if you're not pregnant). Even for people with cycles longer than the typical 28 days, the luteal phase still lasts about 2 weeks, and a longer follicular stage—the stage before ovulation—accounts for the extra days.

To judge your ovulation 24-hour interval, identify the 24-hour interval of your cycle y'all started bleeding heavily (spotting doesn't count), so subtract 14 days. The closer your ovulation day to the day you had unprotected sex activity, the greater your chances of getting pregnant.

But if you're concerned (or hopeful) nigh getting significant a few days before your catamenia, odds are ovulation is long over, your fertile window has airtight, and the likelihood of pregnancy is low.

Say you had unprotected sex on twenty-four hours 21 of your cycle: about seven days subsequently your ovulation day, and about vii days before your period started. By i study'due south estimate, there's a 5% take a chance you were fertile on that twenty-four hour period. (Only merely considering yous were fertile doesn't mean your partner was as well.) The odds go along to driblet off each day later that.

And a five% take a chance of getting significant on day 21 of your bicycle is a conservative estimate compared what other researchers have found:

pregnancy-chance-cycle

Ovulation doesn't happen in all menstrual cycles. Anovulatory cycles—menstrual cycles in which ovulation did not occur, are relatively common; ane study estimates almost a third of otherwise "normal" menstrual cycles are anovulatory. You cannot get pregnant during an anovulatory cycle, as it offers no egg to fertilize.

No matter your chances of pregnancy, conventional at-home pregnancy tests (the ones you lot pee on) are a fairly reliable way to know for sure if you lot're meaning or non.

According to the Mayo Clinic, "Many dwelling pregnancy tests claim to be accurate as early as the showtime twenty-four hours of a missed flow—or even earlier. Yous're likely to get more authentic results, withal, if you await until after the first 24-hour interval of your missed period."

Waiting a solar day yields ameliorate results because most at-abode pregnancy tests are looking for Human Chorionic Gonadotropin (HCG)—a hormone your body makes after the fertilized egg attaches to the wall of the uterus. The amount of HCG in your urine rises quickly after implantation, making pregnancy tests more and more accurate with each passing mean solar day.

Exceptions: When you CAN get pregnant correct before your menstruation

1. If what you think is a menses isn't actually a period. Information technology's possible to mistake your period for ovulation haemorrhage, especially if it comes with menstruation-similar symptoms. Should you mistake an ovulation bleed for a period, "right before your period" (or at least, what you thought was a catamenia) overlaps with your fertile window, and the likelihood of getting pregnant is quite high.

2. If you take a long fertile window. Ovulation typically occurs around day 14 of a 28-24-hour interval menstrual cycle, but everyone's cycle is different. One written report found that "well-nigh women reach their fertile window earlier and others much later" than day fourteen.

Information technology's rare, but you may take a uniquely long, or uniquely late-arriving fertile window. This tin occur naturally, or be a consequence of stress, medications, thyroid disorders, or other conditions. No thing when it occurs, ovulation e'er presents the possibility of getting pregnant, fifty-fifty if very belatedly in your cycle.

Just notation that afterward fertilization, the egg still needs to exist implanted into the uterine wall. That tin can take a week or more. If you fertilize an egg during a fertile window that is very shut to your flow, the odds of a failed implantation (and thus a non-pregnancy) increase because the uterine lining is shed during your period, potentially shedding the fertilized egg along with information technology.

3. If you take irregular cycles. If your period doesn't go far regularly each month (if you sometimes get two periods per month, or get a calendar month or more than without a period, for example), it tin be very difficult to determine when you lot ovulated, and thus when your fertile window was. At-home ovulation tests tin assistance have the guesswork out of when yous're virtually probable to go meaning, especially for those with irregular cycles.

Courtney Mayszak, RDN, LDN is the co-founder of De Lune, who offer an all-natural line of menstrual relief products.

Shop De Lune here!

In: Fertility, Mamazine Moment, The Journey, Health

Tags: nascency, trunk care, cycles, de lune, doula, egg, fertility, fertilization, lifestyle, mama glow, maternal health, menses, menstruation, motherhood, period, menses health, pregnancy, reproductive health, self care, sperm, wellbeing

Shop the Story