5 Weird Facts – You Probably Didn’t Know About Conception

Ah, the miracle of life. There’s nothing more natural and beautiful than the birth of the child. And nothing s*x*er than the way that child was created.

The process of conception has often been shrouded in mystery due to poor science, religious interference, and the refusal of teachers to let dudes see the “girls only” video from S*x Ed. It’s often hard to separate the truth from the myth, even if you own the necessary genitalia to conduct experiments. Luckily, the s*xologists (which is totally a real thing) here at WeirdWorm can help set the record straight. Brace yourself, this might be pretty cold.

It Is Possible to Get Pregnant on the Rag

Because that’s how often women are fertile.

if you were interested in fertility treatment, visiting a fertility clinic like Fertility Plus would be perfect

Thanks to the Bush Administration, millions of Americans have attended classes where they learned that s*x is wrong, their bodies are sinful and everybody waits till marriage before getting it on. Since at least two of those three are outright lies (hey, we’re not here to judge the sinfulness of your body) many kids might be ready to dismiss the entirety of their questionable s*x ed experience. Unfortunately, some of it might have a ring of truth, even the parts that don’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.

A woman’s period typically signals the end of her monthly cycle (or beginning, it’s all the same when it comes to cycles). This should be the longest point away from ovulation. Therefore, it would make sense that, if you’ve got a strong stomach, you could earn your red wings with no risk of baby spawning.

This is sadly not the case. Thanks to either a blind, absentee god or a cruel, unloving universe, women’s cycles are not tightly regulated or wholly predictable. Toss in the fact that sperm can survive for the better part of a week inside a woman, and without protection, you’re looking at the possibility of a shotgun wedding, heavy flow day or not.

You’re More Likely to Have Twins When You’re Older

The standard reproductive cycle is pretty regular for most women. One egg is released, left unfertilized it is shed, and then things get all menstruate-y. Taking things like fertility d**gs can cause multiple eggs to be released, which means there’s greater possibility of producing twins. Oddly, even without the miracles/horrors of modern science, women can increase their odds of having some double trouble. In fact, many women are unintentionally increasing their odds these days, since all it takes is a little waiting.

Women who conceive in their late twenties through to their forties are much more likely to have twins. As their moods start to become more even and predictable, their lady parts do the opposite, sometimes releasing more than one ovum each month. With the addition of male fertilizer, they could start growing twice as many babies as one might expect.

And if you thought that just means starting an additional college fund, think again. Two buns in the oven can mean more cravings, more time at the doctor and probably more morning sickness too. Try to remember that for your speech for whichever kid ends up getting married first.

Women’s Bodies Throw out a Welcome Mat

While it is possible for ladies to ovulate early, late or even more than one ovum at a time, women are usually pretty stingy when it comes to the whole egg sharing thing. Whatever part of their cycle it comes on is usually the same every time. In fact, there is only about a 48-hour window where they can actually conceive. And the end of those 48 hours aren’t even ideal, instead the sperm desperately scrambles to close like a frat boy at last call.

During the actual ovulation period, there are a number of telltale signs. All of them have varying success rates in terms of predicting the point of ovulation. They also all have varying levels of creepiness. One of the most simple is to track body temperature. When it’s time for babymaking, women literally start getting hot, even without a preliminary screening of the Notebook.

A second, more “sciencey” method uses ovulation kits to track hormones. Reproductive hormones in women function like a Swiss watch that got left in the rain: very precise except when they aren’t. Luteinizing hormone has been found to peak just before ovulation, and so with a simple daily pee-on-a-stick routine, it can be tracked.

The third, most accurate and easily most cringe-worthy method comes from monitoring for fertile cervical mucus. This comes as a discharge from a lady’s downtown that is supposed to resemble “raw egg-white”. The volume (shudder) will peak in the days leading up to ovulation. All that’s left is to then convince a man to willingly entrust his most prized organ to something oozing goo, even after he’s probably seen the movie, Alien.

This might not blow your mind, but for a long, long time this was accepted to be true. As far back as 1874 in fact, a rumor was going strong that a lady got pregnant by way of a little hot lead. Like most myths and legends, the plausibility revolved mostly around how well the story was told.

The most popular version cited an American Civil War battle, which in contrast to most urban legends, actually happened. As the story goes, a bullet struck a young Union fighter in the sack, which he probably deemed “About as cool as the South’s lack of emancipation for all peoples!” before high fiving an ex-slave. Or maybe he screamed like a little girl, we weren’t there.

Anyway, the bullet kept on going and lodged in some lady who was watching from her porch. Back then, wars were spectator sports. Exactly 278 days later, it turned out she was totally preggers, having had sperm transferred from the guy’s impromptu vasectomy to her reproductive tract by a musket ball.

As utterly ridiculous as the story may seem, there are some reasons for its continuous popularity. The original lie began as a joke and was published in the American Medical Weekly (a real medical publication) by an actual doctor.

Being a doctor before stuff like vaccines and antibiotics meant a lot more horsing around and banging your “house call” patients. Simpler times. Subsequent citing of the original article ballooned thanks to non-WeirdWorm readers (i.e. those who don’t understand a good joke) and the legend grew.

Aside from the improbability of such an even occurring, the dry, hot surface of the musket ball would hardly be a hospitable vector for sperm. Nor are women typically able to conceive by having semen gouged into their reproductive tract. Well… usually…

…without a v*g*na. Seriously

There is an authenticated case of an African girl that showed a knife wound isn’t just a way to die, but also a way to create life. The young lady was born without a vagina. And for those who are unsure of what the actual medical term vagina refers to, this means the part of the female bits located just inside the opening. Therefore, she was unable to make love in the conventional sense, and had to rely on the oral variety.

And this is exactly why when an ex-lover caught her doing with her new beau, things got a little stabby. Details are unclear about how the fight went down between the two rivals and the golden-gal, but all three individuals soon turned up at the hospital sporting stab wounds.

Our heroine specifically took two deep ones to the abdomen. She was stitched up and went back to her normal activities, which we’ll just skim over for the sake of posterity.

Quite a while later, she experienced significant swelling in the abdominal area are returned to the hospital. There it was discovered she was pregnant, and the details of her s*x life emerged. A quick caesarean section later, and she was the baffled mother of a bouncing baby boy.

The kicker: not having a functional vagina did not mean the rest of her organs were out of whack. It’s believed that the stab wound pierced the stomach (where semen recently, ahem, accumulated) through to the reproductive organs.