CHANGES TO MUM
At 2 weeks of pregnancy you are not in fact pregnant, but due to how pregnancy is calculated, week 1 and 2 after your last menstrual period (LMP) are included in a 40 week, full term pregnancy (read more about this in Week 3 of Pregnancy).
Ovulation usually occurs about 14 days after your last period, but if your cycle is longer or shorter than 28 days your most fertile point will be later or earlier according to your own cycle. There is no exact science to calculating when conception occurred, it is simply based on this estimate of when you were ovulating and your LMP.
After ovulation, an egg can only be fertilised during the next 12 to 24 hours approximately. When you think about it, making a baby and conception is such a miracle when one of your partner’s sperm fuses with one of your eggs.
Trying for a baby can be quite a “trying” time, however don’t be disheartened, it can take up to two years for a couple with normal fertility to conceive. Fertility for both men and women is at its peak around the age of 24.
The overall quality of a woman’s eggs diminishes with age and the quantity of healthy eggs produced. A males sperm count likewise will decline from the age of 40. The older you are the longer it can take to conceive, however there are still many options available to you.
We all know about the birds and the bees, but the basics behind conceiving a child is a males sperm fertilising a woman’s egg by meeting and penetrating the egg.
Despite 300 million sperm being ejaculated during intercourse only a few hundred will actually reach the egg way down a fallopian tube.
Some sperm are destroyed by either vaginal acidity or cleansing cells within the uterus, others trickle out of the vagina, they can even enter the wrong fallopian tube, or go into the correct tube but completely miss the egg.
No wonder it can take time to successfully conceive!
CHANGES TO BUB
Most human cells contain 46 chromosomes that carry genetic information. the sperm cells and the egg cells have 23 chromosomes each and when the sperm and egg meet and fuse together, the fertilised cell as a result has the full 46 chromosomes.
The sex of your baby is determined by just two of the 46 chromosomes of a fertilised cell, the X and the Y. If conception and fertilisation is successful, the gender of your baby is already determined by the 2 chromosomes.
It is the sperm (and therefore the male) that determines the sex of your child. A woman’s eggs each contain a single X chromosome, while a man’s individual sperm have either an X or Y chromosome. If an egg is fertilised by a sperm carrying an X chromosome, the result will be a girl (XX), while if the sperm has a Y chromosome, the baby will be a boy (XY).
You may have some preferences as to what you hope the gender of your baby will be, a girl or boy. There are many wives-tales about things you can try that will result in one or the other, but sadly there is very little scientific evidence to support these ideas.
Twins and multiples are another amazing part of conception. Wondering if you will be blessed with more than one baby?
Twins occur when a woman releases more than one egg at a time. Non-identical (fraternal) twins are developed from two separate eggs and fertilised by two separate sperm, however identical twins come from a single egg and sperm. The single egg divides into two and develops independently, sharing a single placenta.
Multiple pregnancies start in the same way as twins and can be identical or fraternal.