The Process of Conception

Ovulation

Ovulation occurs during the middle of a woman's menstrual cycle. The egg, when it is ripe for fertilization, travels from your ovary down the fallopian tube. The fallopian tube is about six or seven inches long, and leads from the ovary to the cervix and birth canal. Your egg can live for about a day after it's been released from the ovary, according to mothersbliss.com, and waits at the opening of the cervix for a sperm cell to arrive and fertilize it.

Male Ejaculation and Fertilization

After sexual intercourse, when the male reaches climax, muscle contractions in the penis send a small amount of semen into the woman's vagina. The average male ejaculation contains at least 40 million sperm, according to netdoctor.co.uk. Most of these will die in your vagina due to the highly acidic environment, which serves to weed out the weaker sperm cells that wouldn't be able to survive. A single sperm cell--except in the case of twins--penetrates your egg, and a protein shield then forms around the egg to block any other sperm from entering once it's been fertilized.

Nurturing the Fertilized Egg

After the egg has been newly fertilized with a sperm and all the chromosome pairings have taken place, the result is an embryo, which can now undergo mitosis, or cell reproduction. During this process, the embryo travels back up your Fallopian tubes and into your uterus, where it attaches to the placenta via an umbilical cord that transfers all the necessary nutrients for survival from you to the embryo. The journey from cervix to uterus takes approximately a week.

References

• Baby Planning Time - Ovulation
• Semen and Sperm Quality

Resources

• Read this Article in Spanish