I used quotations because that’s not really what I mean and I couldn’t come up with a clear title. I hope I can describe this situation well enough to get valid answers. Is it possible to be menstruating, have protected (in which protection may have failed) sex, continue menstruating for a couple of days and then actually become pregnant? As in, the sperm hasn’t made it’s way up yet, but then it does, eventually. Ok, how can I make this question make more sense?
My understanding is that under ideal conditions with fertile-quality cervical fluid, sperm can survive inside a woman’s body for up to 5 days. So in the extremely unlikely event that sperm survive in the non-ideal conditions of menstruation, and then the woman ovulates really, really, really, really early in her cycle, then yeah, I guess that could happen. Slightly more likely would be a situation where sex occurs at the very end of menstruation, and then fertile-quality cervical fluid immediately shows up, and ovulation occurs quickly. Still not super likely, but more likely than the given situation where sex occurs and then menstruation continues for a couple of days afterward.
You can ovulate while menstruating. It is not typical, nor is it likely that you get pregnant while ovulating during your period (as noted the fluid is hostile to sperm), but it is definitely possible. You can also ovulate just after menstruating, and get pregnant from sperm that is still present, living (and fiesty) from having sex during your period. Also rare, but possible.
Fascinating stuff in that links - thanks! But as I understood things, a “period” is the uterine lining sloughing off. So if a woman is still bleeding, wouldn’t it be impossible for an embryo to implant in her uterus?
Yes. However, typically once an egg is fertilized, it takes a few days for it to implant in the uterus anyway. So in this situation, you would have sperm that hangs around long enough to fertilize the egg, and then several days later implants in the uterus, which is by now finished sloughing off the lining.
It’s about 5-7 days between Sperm meeting Egg and actual implantation.
Yes, probably, but the zygote (embryo-to-be) doesn’t implant for roughly two weeks in any pregnancy. For 12-14 days, it’s traveling down the fallopian tube, cell division going like mad. (This is one reason why, although we don’t really advertise it, a night of binge drinking or drug use in the first two weeks isn’t really a big deal; the fetus isn’t hooked up to your plumbing, so the drugs won’t have reached its system.) Only after about two weeks does it implant. While the uterine lining won’t be at its fullest and plumpest at that point, there’s enough of it for implantation to occur.
Back to the OP: yes, you should consider it possible to become pregnant at any time of the month if you’re not tracking your cycle. Most “period” babies happen because what was going on wasn’t actually a true menstruation. If your body doesn’t release an egg on time, then estrogen will continue building and building and building in your system. Eventually it reaches a point* where the uterine lining starts to slough off in reaction to the excess estrogen, not because you’ve ovulated and not conceived. It’s possible, during these estrogen induced “periods”, for your body to ovulate and the egg to be fertilized and…well, you know the rest.
Any birth control failure, any time of the month, for any fertile woman who can’t pinpoint the day of ovulation by symptothermal methods should be considered a potential pregnancy and treated accordingly.
*For the real nerds out there, it’s not the level of estrogen per se, but a high ratio of estrogen to progesterone that causes uterine sloughing. But that’s probably more information than you needed to know…
Oh, and just to scare the pants off (or maybe on) every woman on the planet…it’s technically possible to become pregnant *while *you’re pregnant. It’s extremely rare, and there are less than a dozen cases in the medical literature, but it has happened.
Yes, the news reports a few months ago mentioned the situation where the woman ovulated (and “re-conceived”) 24 days after the first conception. Contrary to the Wiki article, nowadays apparently early ultrasound tests can narrow down the conception date fairly accurately; they measure the embryo size and look it up on a chart to get within a few days accuracy.
The human body is capable of doing very weird things. I recall some discussion board I read where several women were sure they could only have gotten pregnant during their period. Ovulation can and occasionally does happen way off schedule or multiple times per period. Add to that the other possibilities - some women do not register positive on a home test for well past the 2 week window, and decidual bleeding can make a woman think she is having periods so she may not realize she is pregnant. The only seriously accurate answer to timing is that early ultrasound measurement, and even that might be off if the tech makes some mistakes.
There’s also the possibility that for that time for that woman, her fluids may not be sufficiently hostile to sperm and it may survive the 3 or more days until an early ovulation occurs.
Unprotected sex at any time carries a risk. There’s only one way to find out if it does cause a pregnancy. Maybe a lot of unlikely events in a row have to occur, but someone wins the lottery every few weeks too.
Of course some women get bleeding around ovulation as well, which could be mistaken for a period if a woman’s regular periods were light and irregular.
And I have heard both ways, that implantation bleeding might be mistaken for a period and also that it could not possibly be, it is too light.
They can certainly measure the fetus and, early on, get a pretty good idea of the conception date. But a smaller than the other fetus could also be a traditional twin with a growth problem. That’s why they need more testing after birth to confirm a case of superfetation suggested by an ultrasound.
Interesting fact-
Orthodox Jewish women who are unfortunate enough to have short cycles and long periods can find it difficult to get pregnant, due to the fact that for them, intercourse must be avoided until 8 days after the end of a period.
For a woman with 5 day periods and a 28 day cycle, this means intercourse resumes on day 13 or 14, coinciding with ovulation on day 14.
For a woman with 7 day periods and a 22 day cycle, ovulation is on day 8.
If she is an observant Jew the earliest she can have intercourse is day 15- making pregnancy very unlikely.
If she is NOT an observant Jew, she could get pregnant from day 2 onwards…i.e. during her period, given that sperm can live for 5-7 days in the female genital tract.
How “safe” it is to have sex during your period depends on:
a) how sure you are it is really a period
b) how long your cycle is ( the longer, the safer)
c) whether you’re having sex at the beginning or end of the period.
Bottom line: use a method of contraception every time you have sex unless you really don’t mind having a baby.
Sex during a woman’s period? Yuck. That’s not happening no matter how cute the girl.
MODERATOR NOTE, not a warning.
aceplace57. Extraneous post. No one asked you how you feel about sex with a woman during her period. If you need to vent, start your own thread in the appropriate forum.
samclem MOderator, GQ.
NM
Yep… I have a friend who strongly suspects this is what happened to her, though of course she can’t prove it. She had fraternal twins, and one had substantially more problems with prematurity than the other one did, indicative of being 2-ish weeks more “underdone” the other. Since she didn’t have early ultrasounds that could have proven the situation, of course, there’s no way of knowing for sure.
If she really, really wants to know, there are chromosomal tests that can be done. Every time a cell divides, markers show it, so it can be determined that Baby A has more cell divisions than Baby B, indicating more cell divisions since conception.
But I suspect it’s pretty expensive, and not much practical information can be gleaned from it, other than medical curiosity.
I’m pretty sure my daughter was conceived while my (now ex) girlfriend was having her period. But it’s been a few years and my memory may not be accurate, I may be remembering the time before that