When is the Best Time to Get Pregnant?

If getting pregnant seems like a mystery, you’re not alone.

From how often to have sex to whether you should have sex multiple times a day, it can feel hard to keep up with all the information you need to boost your chances of conceiving. Then, when it comes to determining when the best time is to get pregnant, you may feel lost. 

The answer to that particular question depends on you, your body, and your cycle, making it unique to each person. 

Here’s your guide to finding your unique answer and decoding when the best time is to get pregnant, according to your body.

Ovulation: the key to pregnancy

Ovulation is the hormone-driven moment in your cycle when your ovaries release an egg. That egg has two paths:

• Fertilization: The egg gets fertilized by sperm, implants in the uterine lining, and you may become pregnant.
• No fertilization: The egg doesn’t get fertilized, reaches the end of its viability 12 to 24 hours later, and is absorbed back into your body.

Since ovulation provides the egg that can become a pregnancy, having sex around the day of ovulation is necessary for getting pregnant. 

That makes ovulation the key to conceiving. In other words, understanding your ovulation can help you find when the best time is to get pregnant for you—depending on your unique body, cycle, and ovulation. 

Let’s take a closer look at how to understand your ovulation.

When do you ovulate?

Step one of identifying the best time to get pregnant is knowing when (and whether) you ovulate. When you’re trying to conceive, this information is crucial for correctly timing sex to ovulation in order to optimize your chances of getting pregnant each cycle.

Ovulation generally occurs around midway through your cycle. Where your cycle midpoint falls depends on your body, meaning the timing of ovulation is different for each person.

Let’s say your cycles generally last around 32 days—that means you may ovulate around cycle day 16. But for someone whose cycle length averages 22 days, ovulation may happen closer to day 11.

If you have irregular periods (many people do!), ovulation timing and regularity may vary month to month. Even with regular cycles, though, ovulation can move around.

How do you determine when you, specifically, ovulate? Whether your cycles are regular or irregular, that’s sometimes easier said than done. Luckily, there are fertility tools to help you track your ovulation and tell when you’ve ovulating.

>>MORE: When Did I Ovulate? Your Guide To Confirming Ovulation

How to tell when you’re ovulating

By pinpointing ovulation, you can determine when the best time is to get pregnant each cycle. 

There are a couple ways to identify ovulation. One is to look to the signs of ovulation your body may show. These can help clue you in to whether you’re ovulating.

Signs and symptoms of ovulation include:

• Thick, clear, and stretchy cervical mucus (or “egg-white” mucus) 
• Elevated basal body temperature (BBT)
• Mild abdominal cramping (or ovulation pain)
• Changes in cervical position
• Ovulation bleeding

Keep in mind, though, that not everyone experiences signs of ovulation. If you don’t, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not ovulating—your body just might not show it the same way.

The other, more surefire way to identify ovulation is to track your ovulation.

How to track ovulation

You can track your ovulation using at-home fertility tools like ovulation tests (sometimes called ovulation predictor kits, or OPKs). 

Ovulation tests measure particular hormones, generally in your urine, to capture the changes that indicate ovulation. Keep in mind, though, that not all tests are equally capable, and traditional OPKs can sometimes miss the mark.

More advanced, multi-hormone ovulation trackers go a few steps further than traditional OPKs, giving you a greater level of precision and certainty about what’s happening in your body, and when.

The Oova multi-hormone fertility kit is one example of an advanced ovulation tracker that’s up to the task. Oova measures three reproductive hormones that are key to ovulation: estrogen, luteinizing hormone, and progesterone. 

As Oova learns your cycles, the app will prompt you to test on particular days, taking the guesswork out of when to test (something traditional OPKs can’t do). Then, the app compares levels to your unique hormone baseline in order to detect when you’re ovulating and confirm ovulation, with lab-level precision—even if you have irregular cycles.

As you measure your hormones and track your ovulation across multiple cycles, you’ll be more prepared to identify the best time to get pregnant. That way, you maximize your chances of conceiving each cycle.

>>MORE: How To Track Ovulation With Irregular Periods

How to find your fertile window

Ovulation itself may only last about one day, but you have a longer window of time for getting pregnant each cycle.

This is known as your “fertile window,” or the six-day period when you’re most fertile—and when conceiving is possible. Your fertile window starts around five days before ovulation, then continues into the day of ovulation. 

Since the fertile window is based around when you ovulate, you can identify your fertile days by tracking ovulation. That way, you can match sex more precisely to your unique timing, giving you the best chance of getting pregnant in a given cycle.

When is the best time to get pregnant?

Now, back to you and your pregnancy timing. 

How does this all relate to your fertility journey, and when is the best time to get pregnant, according to your unique body? 

The answer is: the best time to get pregnant is during your fertile window, when you’re ovulating. 

So, if your body and your ovulation test kits indicate that you’re in your fertile window and approaching ovulation, it’s time to get busy! For the best chances of conceiving, experts recommend having sex every other day or every day during your fertile window. 

Don’t worry if you don’t have sex on the actual day of ovulation—as long as you have sex regularly throughout your fertile window, you’re doing what you can to conceive that cycle. 

When is the best time to get pregnant: the bottom line

The best time to get pregnant is during the fertile window, around ovulation. For you, that means that the best time to get pregnant depends on when you ovulate. 

To identify when you ovulate and understand which cycle days fall during your fertile window, you can track your ovulation with ovulation tests and keep an eye out for physical signs.

From there, you can better understand your unique, ideal time to get pregnant each cycle.