Cervical Mucus - It Sounds Gross,
But It's Vital To Conception!
Have you ever found thick sticky cervical mucus in your underwear and wondered what it was all about?
Perhaps you have even been embarrassed or worried about it?Don't be, it is actually your bodies way of preparing you for possible conception. It's what helps the sperm make its way to the egg, where it may be fertilized and lead to pregnancy.
The texture and appearance of cervical mucus takes on different forms throughout your cycle. It's knowing which type of mucus is the one that is most fertile that will help you get pregnant!
It has been said that cervical mucus observations can be around 98.5% accurate as to indicating the most fertile and infertile time in your monthly cycle.
So you can either monitor your cervical mucus on it's own as a way of increasing your chances of pregnancy, or if you feel you really want to maximize your chances of conception, you can do so in conjunction with recording your daily temperature on a basal body thermometer, or by other ways, such as found on the trying to conceive page.
Firstly, it's important for you to know that your mucus and it's quality and quantity can be effected by different external factors.
Stress, medications or drugs (including Clomid), can impact your mucus. Being ill, crash dieting, rapid weight change, or even traveling a lot, and being menopausal, can impact your mucus too.
The 5 Types of Cervical Mucus:
How to identify fertile mucus
Everyone's mucus patterns are different, so you need to pay attention
to your own patterns, you can do so by monitoring your mucus from the
end of your period each month.1. Infertile Mucus
Usually Mucus after your period is dry. However it is possible to still find mucus. If you do, it is more likely to be sticky and may even come as a blob. Some women have described this type of mucus to be thick, dense, sticky, flaky, or tacky.Fertile mucus is more moist, whereas this type of mucus can be yellow, white or opaque. A good indicator of fertile mucus is stretchy mucus: but this type won't stretch at all!
2. Possibly Infertile or Slightly Fertile Mucus
As your body starts responding to increasing levels of oestrogen, you will find your mucus become sticky and damp-like.You have a slight chance of conception at this stage of your cycle, but because your mucus isn't highly fertile yet, the sperm usually can't penetrate the mucus to make the long swim to the egg.
Some women have described this type of mucus as creamy, pasty, thick, cloudy, sticky, flaky and tacky. Again, this mucus doesn't stretch, but it will feel slightly damper than infertile mucus, and may be in more abundant.
3. Fertile Mucus
This is the type of mucus you want to start seeing if you are hoping to fall pregnant. When you see fertile mucus, it signals the impending arrival of ovulation, the time when your egg is ready to be released and hopefully meet up with sperm.Your mucus will become more watery and feel more slippery, it can be described as clear, thin and fluid, and when you do the 'stretch test' (stretching your mucus between your thumb and index finger) you will notice it stretches much more easily then the aforementioned types of mucus.
4. Highly Fertile Mucus
Some women swear by taking Evening Primrose Oil tablets to increase their levels of EWCM. The main difference between highly fertile mucus and infertile mucus, is that this type will stretch out of shape, it's much easier for the sperm to swim though and creates an excellent environment for them to reach their destination, the egg.
Find out more about Fertile Mucus and how it can help you get pregnant quicker.
5. Post Ovulation (During your Luteal Phase)
After ovulation your mucus may return to infertile mucus, and some women completely dry up having none at all, particularly leading up to your period. If you do happen to get a big glob of mucus prior to your period it will be infertile.Check out this video about fertile cervical mucus to help you learn more about your body:
So, How do you Monitor
Your Cervical Mucus?
It depends on what you are most comfortable with, but there are 3 main ways:
*Toilet paper – wipe just before you urinate and observe
*Externally – you can use your fingers to feel around the opening of your vagina for any mucus present
*Internally – you can insert two fingers into your vagina and sweep the cervix, then observe.
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