Читать книгу Sex For Dummies - Pierre Lehu A., Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer - Страница 16

Everyone’s talking about what happened last night at Club Fallopian. Mr. Sperm bumped into Ms. Egg, and now they’re really stuck on each other!

Just as people have to meet each other before they can form a relationship, the process of fertilization can’t begin until a sperm gets up into the fallopian tubes and meets the egg. This introduction takes place as a result of sexual intercourse, which is defined as a man placing his penis in a woman’s vagina. When the man has an orgasm, he releases millions of sperm into the back of the woman’s vagina. These sperm bind to the cervical mucus and swim right up through the entrance to the uterus, called the cervix, through the uterus itself, and then into the fallopian tubes — each sperm hunting for an egg. And if an egg happens to be floating along, the fastest sperm takes the prize.

You should always keep in mind two very important points about sperm:

 Sperm can live from two to seven days inside a woman. So although the egg may have only a short time during which it can be fertilized, sperm that a man deposited in the woman up to a week before can still fertilize the egg and cause pregnancy.

 Even before a man ejaculates, his penis releases some liquid (the proper name is Cowper’s fluid, because the Cowper’s gland produces it, but it’s popularly referred to as “precum”), which serves as a lubricant to help the sperm go up the shaft of the penis. Any sperm that may not have been ejaculated during the man’s previous orgasms may be picked up by the Cowper’s fluid. Although that number is less than the millions of sperm in the ejaculate, how many sperm does an egg require for fertilization? One fast one.Because of Cowper’s fluid, a man may deposit sperm inside a woman’s vagina before he has an orgasm. That’s why the pullout, or withdrawal, method is not an effective means of preventing pregnancy.