Guest Author - Holly Webster

If you've read Part 1 of the Basics of Conception, you realize that you need a healthy sperm and a healthy egg to start off a healthy baby. If you have these two things, then it's time to consider how to get them to meet up.

The sperm and egg have the best chance of merging properly and becoming a viable fetus if they connect in the woman's fallopian tube. Her fallopian tubes are tubes which connect where the eggs begin (her ovaries) to where the baby grows (her uterus). The woman has two ovaries, so she has two fallopian tubes, one on each side of the uterus.

Each month, the woman releases an egg from one of these ovaries down into the tubes, and the egg finds its way down the tube, and then into the uterus. The uterus is lined with blood just in case the egg is now fertilized and wishes to grow into a baby. If her body detects at the end of the cycle that the egg really wasn't fertilized, it flushes out the blood and egg and prepares to start again.

So depending on the woman's menstrual cycle, the sperm needs to enter the vagina on the correct day in order to reach the fallopian tube when the egg is there.

Each woman's menstrual cycle is different, so be sure to read about Figuring Out your Menstrual Cycle to see when that would be for you.

On to Part 3 - Making the Connection