How your saliva can help you conceive

You read that right! Your saliva may be able to help you get pregnant. But sorry, men, it doesn’t work in the way that you may be thinking. For some lucky women, one or two attempts at baby-making can be enough to conceive a baby. But for others, it takes months and even years of planning.

For all of you who are currently in the latter boat, I can identify. It took me a year and a half to conceive each of my girls, and during that time, I tried every technique I could find to help the process along. The saliva technique is one that I tested, and I’ll tell you about how it went below.

But first, why might we even need a saliva test?

When you really think about how conception happens, it’s quite amazing that so many babies are born at all! Here are some things you need to know if you’re trying to conceive:

• A Google search will tell you that once ovulated, the egg lasts for a maximum of 24 hours. But many scientific papers report that the lifespan of an egg is much less than that, more like 6-12 hours after ovulation! 

• Only 1 in a million sperm actually makes it to the oviduct where the egg is. 

• Only 10% of those can be properly ‘activated’ to fertilize the egg!

• Not only that, but while sperm can live up to 3.5 days, most of them likely live for only a little over 1 day in the woman’s reproductive tract. This means that the sperm and the egg must meet in an extremely small window of time for a successful conception. 

The key to success is to time intercourse to allow the sperm and egg to meet at the perfect time. Ideally, you want fresh sperm waiting for the egg when it ovulates.

How might saliva tell you about the timing of ovulation?

Our ovulatory cycles span an average of 28 days. I say ‘average’, because every woman is slightly different; some have longer cycles and some have shorter ones.

Cycle day one is the first day of your period. Partway through that period week, a follicle that contains an egg starts developing in your ovary. That follicle produces estrogen, and as the follicle grows bigger and bigger, it produces more and more estrogen. 

As the follicle gets big enough to ovulate (around day 13 or 14), estrogen levels get really high. That’s when you start getting changes in your body that you can measure:

• Your body temperature takes a small dip just before ovulation when estrogen levels are peaking, and then rises after ovulation, when estrogen levels plummet. 

• Your vaginal mucus gets thinner and less viscous. This makes it easier for sperm to pass through it. Immediately after ovulation, when estrogen levels drop, the mucus gets very thick. At this point, sperm won’t likely be able to make it to the egg.

• The pH of your vaginal mucus also rises. Usually it is acidic, but it becomes more neutral, and even a little basic, to help sperm survive better. 

• Finally, the salt content (called salinity) of both your vaginal mucus and your saliva rise substantially just before ovulation, when estrogen is high. This change in your vaginal mucus likely makes the environment better for sperm survival. Scientists think the change in the salt content in saliva is a side-effect, because salt levels in the entire body rise to accomplish the changes in the vaginal mucus. In fact, even the salt content of your tears and your nasal mucus rise just before ovulation!

Here’s what the profiles look like in relation to your ovulatory cycle:

So can you actually use saliva to predict the timing of ovulation?

Well, there is actually an easy way that you can actually see the changes in the salinity of your saliva. You just need a $1 eye dropper, a microscope slide, and a cheap microscope. When your saliva has a high salinity (a lot of salt), it will dry in a fern-like pattern on a microscope slide.

There are companies out there that sell microscopes specifically for this purpose. Here’s one:

Fertile Focus: Pinpoint Ovulation 3 Days in Advance

(Note that as an Amazon associate, I may stand to profit from purchases using links in this blog post.)

However, if your child has one of those play microscopes at home, that one may even work.

So here’s how you do this:

Step 1: When you first wake up in the morning, you spit into a small cup. A paper or plastic bathroom cup works well for this. 

Step 2: Next, you use your eye dropper to squeeze a small (must be small!) drop of saliva on the microscope slide. (I usually did three just in case one of them didn’t set well.)

Step 3: Now you need to let it dry. This generally takes about about 30 minutes, and then you can resume the process.

Step 4: Once the saliva is dry, check out your microscope slide under the microscope. You’ll need a magnification around 40-50X to see it well. 

Here’s what you’re looking for:

The salinity of your saliva will rise as estrogen starts to rise, so you should see the fern-like pattern start to develop about 2-3 days before ovulation. The closer you get, the more of a fern-like pattern you’ll see. I tested it out, and here’s what I saw:

The fern pattern definitely emerged as I got closer to the ovulation date. There were some days, however, that I was squinting at the pattern, trying to figure out if it was a fern pattern or not. I also got some fern patterns during some very early cycle days when I shouldn’t have. So it wasn’t exactly a breeze. There’s now a test out there that will measure the actual salinity of your saliva and your vaginal mucus. Be warned, it’s pretty pricey ($299), but it takes out the guessing game of whether you see a fern pattern. 

OvaCue Fertility Monitor: Predict Ovulation 7 Days in Advance

So is this all you’ll need? Probably not.

I actually tried using this for a couple of months during my fertility journey, and while the saliva test helped me get a general ballpark idea of when I was going to ovulate, it was far from perfect. The results are quite sensitive to how much and what you had to drink the night before the test. In addition to that, the rate that salinity rises before ovulation is a bit different for everyone. So, while it will give you a ballpark estimate within a couple of days of ovulation, combining it with some other methods will give you a better idea of precisely when you’re about to ovulate. 

Here’s a good combination of tests to use:

First: Start testing your saliva at about cycle day 10. That way, you can really see it change over time, and that will give you a better idea of when you’re really getting close. 

Second: Chart your basal body temperature every day of your cycle. This temperature needs to be taken vaginally (fun, I know), first thing in the morning. You’ll need to use a thermometer designed specifically for basal body temperature. You can get one at any pharmacy, or here’s one you can order on Amazon that interacts with your phone:

Digital Basal Body Thermometer – Track Your Cycle – Natural Fertility and Pregnancy Planning

You should see a slight dip in temperature on the day before you ovulate. Unfortunately, many people spend a lot of time relying on this test, but the small temperature dip is quite easy to miss. Often, this test becomes an indicator that you’ve already missed your chance when you see the post-ovulation rise in temperature. At least you know, though, and can plan for the next cycle. 

Third: Keep an eye on that vaginal mucus. As you get close to ovulation, you’ll notice that it gets very thin and stretchy. You can test this by wiping the area with toilet paper, lifting the mucus off the paper, and stretching it between your forefinger and thumb. During your fertile window, it will look transparent, like egg white, and will stretch more than an inch between your fingers. For pictures of this, go here.

Fourth: Finally, if you really want the best chance of catching that egg, you’ll need to use a digital ovulation test. Just before you ovulate, your body produces a surge of a hormone called luteinizing hormone (LH).

The digital ovulation test looks a lot like a pregnancy test, but it tests for LH instead. Here’s the most common one that is recommended by fertility clinics:

Clearblue Advanced Digital Ovulation Predictor KIT

In most cases, companies recommend to start testing at day 10 of your cycle. You test each morning (using first morning’s urine) until you get a smiley face on the indicator. That smile face usually indicates that you will ovulate within the next 12-24h. Some women have small LH peaks, so if you find that you’re not getting a smiley at all, try testing in the morning and at night. If the saliva method is working for you, you could potentially start testing when you start seeing ferning (day 12-13) instead of at day 10 each month. That might save you a few test strips each month (and some $). 

Here’s why you’ll probably need at least a couple of these methods:

Our ovulatory cycles are rarely perfect. You may have some months where you ovulate on day 11 and others on day 15. Even if you catch that LH surge using the digital ovulation test, that gives you about 12h for you to have intercourse and for the sperm to make it up to the egg. That’s not a lot of time.

Studies show that it is possible for sperm to get there in as little as 45 minutes, but it is more likely that the sperm will take several hours (even up to 12!) to get to the egg. What’s more, having intercourse after you have already ovulated is almost never successful, because the egg is almost always too old to be fertilized by the time the sperm reach it. 

This means that having intercourse on several consecutive days up to the day of ovulation is your best bet, so you’ll have sperm waiting for the egg when it ovulates.

If you’re using the saliva test, you can start having sex when that ferning pattern just starts appearing. Then, when the digital ovulation test tells you that you’re surging, you can make extra efforts that day. When the basal body temperature goes up, you know you’ve done all you can for the month. Hopefully you can then celebrate a positive pregnancy test 12-14 days later!

Wishing you all lots of luck and baby dust!