As we all know - knowing when you ovulate is step 1 in helping you get pregnant.  As they say, “the likelihood of conception is increased if intercourse is timed to coincide” with your fertile period.

Ninth grade health class told us that women ovulate around 14 days BEFORE their next period. That’s very useful information if your cycles run like a fine Swiss watch. Unfortunately, my cycles tend to resemble the old Soviet train schedules – I never know when the next one is coming.

And it turns out I am not alone.

In a wonderful and useful study done at the Tufts Medical School, scientists proved that MOST women have NO idea when they ovulate.

Three hundred and thirty women were recruited to report when they believed they ovulated and also took tests to determine when they actually ovulated through the detection of the luteinizing hormone.

Turns out, only 12.7% got it right. The rest, not so much. Some women missed the mark by up to 27 days.

27 days!

Here is the really scary part: Only 55% of the estimated ovulation days fell within the volunteer’s fertile window.

That means for the remaining 45% of the women in the study, when they thought they had ovulated, they were nowhere near their most fertile time. They missed the boat entirely, as it were.

To me this says that it is NOT enough to simply assume you know you are ovulating. You need to track your symptoms in a tool like Glow. Even if you do not want to spend the money on Ovulation tests, charting your BBT and monitoring your CM can still get you much closer and give you a better chance. 

Are you suprised by the findings of this study? Or is this what you would expect? That 45% of women out there have NO idea when their fertile period is?