Getting pregnant and testing
Trying through regular unprotected sex?
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Trying through regular unprotected sex?
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Learn how ovulation and the fertile window actually work.
The evidence landscape
Trying through regular unprotected sex? - Stopped periods, pelvic pain, unusual bleeding, difficulty having sex, or past pelvic disease or surgery? Talk to your clinician now. - Over 40? Talk to your clinician now. - 35–40? Get checked after 6 months (NHS starts earlier checks at 36). - Under 35? Get checked after 12 months. Already in fertility care or using a donor? Ask your clinic. A normal ovarian reserve result doesn't mean you have time to wait.
Thirteen sources: nine authority documents (NICE twice, ACOG twice, ASRM twice, NHS twice, WHO) and four research papers. Two of the papers are full text and two you can only read as abstracts, so we've used those two no further than their abstracts go.
The thresholds are the strong part of this page. What's weaker is everything that sounds like a forecast.
When the answer changes
The thresholds are the strong part of this page. What's weaker is everything that sounds like a forecast. The cumulative percentages are observational, they come to you through guidelines rather than the original papers, and the two source tables differ in the tail. The figure for how many evaluations find nothing rests on a single NHS sentence. And the claim that ovarian reserve tests don't predict natural conception is stated directly by ASRM but supported here by a paper we can only read as an abstract. The thing we most want you to avoid is the quiet one. A normal test result is not evidence that you have time. It's evidence that the test was normal. If you've passed your threshold, that's still true with good numbers in your hand. And nothing here supports the idea that you've caused this or waited too long. You haven't done anything wrong by not knowing where the line was. That's what the page is for. Go to a clinician now, without waiting for a threshold, if your periods have stopped, if you have pelvic pain or bleeding that isn't normal for you, if sex is painful or difficult, or if you already know about a pelvic condition or previous pelvic surgery. Those aren't questions for a website.
Eating for fertility
What should I eat while trying to conceive?
Stress and fertility
Does stress matter, and what can I do?
Our public fertility answers link to the sources behind them. If an answer has been reviewed by a clinician, that will be noted on the page.