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Predicting ovulation is not a precise science, but familiarity with your cervical secretions makes it a whole lot easier. The general advice is always to have lots of sex, rather than limiting it to a specific time – but when the pressure is on to conceive, sex can lose some of its spontaneity, which makes knowing the most fertile time of your cycle useful.

Try and keep some perspective about this, and don’t restrict sex to an exercise in conception – try and make sure you and your partner enjoy it for its own sake, too, and as a way to express your loving feelings for each other.

Cervical Secretions and Semen

If you find that you have more watery or raw egg white days than you would expect and that these often follow days or nights when you’ve had intercourse, then you may be mistaking seminal fluid for cervical secretions. They are quite similar, but remember that fertile cervical secretions are clear, stretchy and shiny. They can stretch a couple of inches without breaking. Semen may be more whitish and will break when pulled. Generally if you have had sex the night before, by lunchtime the following day there should be no trace of semen and you should be able to concentrate on your secretions.

Many women continue to experience a degree of cervical secretion after ovulation (necessary to keep the vagina moist and healthy) because the corpus luteum produces small amounts of oestrogen along with larger amounts of progesterone. However, this is no indicator of fertility: once ovulation has occurred for a cycle, it won’t occur again until the next one.

When you first start to take note of your secretions, they may be erratic and won’t follow the usual pattern of dry, sticky and white→clear and wet→sticky, white and dry again. Stick with it; it may take a while to work out.