| Maybe Baby measures oestrogen levels as they rise and fall every cycle to help predict and pinpoint your ovulation. Oestrogen levels are controlled by a very complex interplay of hormones within the body that prepare the ovaries to produce eggs and prepare the uterus to receive the embryo. These hormonal interplays cause the changing phases of a menstrual cycle. Here is a brief overview of these phases. Ovulation Ovulation is the fertile time of your menstrual cycle. Each month eggs are maturing inside the ovary at different stages. During ovulation, one egg is released into the fallopian tube, where it may meet the sperm and become fertilised. Twins More than one egg might be released at the same time - the cause of most cases of fraternal twins - but this is rare: about 3% of births are twins or triplets. In the case of fraternal twins, two eggs are fertilised by separate sperm and develop in the womb together. In the case of identical twins, a single egg is released and is fertilised by a single sperm, but it divides in the womb into two separate embryos. Fraternal twins may be the same or different sexes; identical twins will always be the same gender. Follicular Phase Your body prepares in a number of ways for a fertilised egg. During the Follicular Phase, a maturing egg inside a follicle develops in the ovary. The lining of the uterus starts to thicken and the follicle secretes growing amounts of oestrogen. At ovulation the oestrogen production comes to a peak, the egg is released from the follicle, and it starts moving towards the uterus along the fallopian tube. Luteal Phase In the Luteal Phase, the egg-less follicle becomes a corpus luteum, stops making oestrogen and generates progesterone which has the effect of continuing to develop the uterine lining (the endometrium) to prepare it for implantation of a fertilised egg, and slightly raises the basal body temperature. Meanwhile, the egg is fertile for about 24 hours after release. The egg can't be fertilised before it is released, nor can it be fertilised more than 24 hours later. If fertilization takes place, immediately after the egg is released from the follicle, the fertilized egg continues to move along the fallopian tubes towards the uterus and then attaches itself to the wall of the uterus and becomes an embryo. Once there it starts to secrete hormones of its own, which cause the uterine lining to stay intact to support the growing baby. Congratulations! You are pregnant! Menstruation If fertilisation does not take place immediately after the egg is released, and consequently no fertilised egg implants itself in the endometrium, the corpus luteum fades away, progesterone production ceases and the uterine lining detaches. This results in menstruation (your period) and the start of another cycle. Wikipedia has full details of the entire menstrual cycle. A World of Tests Many tests are available that report on the menstrual cycle. It may helpful to use several ovulation detection (OPK) methods together with Maybe Baby to confirm your ovulation date. Bear in mind, however, that unlike many of these methods, Maybe Baby allows you to predict your ovulation so you can prepare for the precious window of opportunity every month. Furthermore, Maybe Baby can be re-used again and again, so you won’t have to keep purchasing disposable products such as LH tests every month. For more details on using other ovulation predictor kits to complement Maybe Baby, please read our Scientific Studies page: Using Maybe Baby with other Ovulation Detection Methods. Affordable Detection and Prediction The discovery that oestrogen is secreted in saliva when ovulating was made by scientists in the 1950s. It was also discovered that as this saliva dried, the oestrogen would form crystals which were visible under high magnification. There was enormous interest in a saliva ovulation test that was non-invasive, simple, and accurately predicted when a woman was most fertile, but back then the cost of microscopes capable of seeing the crystals meant that this test was only available in laboratories. (79) All this changed when Maybe Baby was released in Australia in 1999. For the first time an affordable, accurate and reusable microscope is available for discreet and private use by women who are trying to get pregnant. Sufficiently-high levels of oestrogen crystalize when saliva dries on a slide, and these crystals can be seen as a fern-leaf pattern through a microscope. Microscopes cost thousands of dollars, and are not readily available to most people, especially at home, so this simple and non-invasive method of predicting ovulation was not readily available.
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