New Sex Therapy Advice! Q&A on the Perserverance of Sperm

Happy Tuesday readers! Today is an exciting day for the On The Couch blog, as we are unveiling our new format. Taking inspiration from the famous radio show Loveline and our favorite advice columns, we are now adding in a Question & Answer series to alternate with our regular topics of interest. Every two weeks on Tuesday you'll now get either the fresh Question of the Month from a reader about whatever current sex or relationship quandary we can help with, or our usual coverage of whatever is on the cutting edge of the Sex Therapy world.

Our next installment, special for Halloween on Tuesday October 30th will be a special expanded blog covering the popular erotic romance novel 50 Shades of Grey. Start reading yours now to join in the conversation!

While we look forward to exploring the taboo worlds of bondage and fantasy with you next time, this week we received a question about a topic also important to Mr. Christian Grey - safe sex and pregnancy.

What's the deal with sex on your period? Can you actually get pregnant? Should you do anything differently?      - Trying to keep the parenthood planned

This is an important and complicated question, Trying. While it is often believed that there is no risk of pregnancy during a woman's period, it could in fact be a possibility depending on the timing of your cycle. As this chart below illustrates,

on an average cycle, the fertile days of ovulation are typically about 7 days after the end of the period. However, not everyone has an average cycle every time, and sometimes ovulation can occur as few as 5 days after the period, explained under "Tracking Ovulation" section of this article by the American Pregnancy Association (with the first day of the period marked as the beginning of the cycle.) This would seem to still leave us pretty safe, but the tricky part comes in when we also learn that sperm can stay alive inside the uterus and cervix for up to five days. So, theoretically one could have unprotected sex on day five of their cycle at the end of the bleeding, and the sperm could stay alive for five days, and if the woman also ovulates a bit early that month on day ten, there would still be some persistent sperm ready and waiting for that new egg when it comes along, creating a risk for pregnancy. This seems rare and unlikely, but we all know that person who miraculously got pregnant under the most seemingly safe of circumstances. We recommend that you get in touch with the signals of your cycle through some research on Natural Family Planning to help understand these important details more.Then discuss with your partner what is the safest contraceptive plan based on both of your current levels of commitment to accurately tracking the phases of your cycle, perhaps a combination of understanding the safe times of the month and one of the other methods listed on contracept.org. Happy enlightened and empowered lovemaking!