episode transcript

[00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the second installment of The Fertility Files. And today, we are talking all about cervical mucus. And if you don't know already, this is one of my favorite things to talk about because I believe it is the underdog of fertility support. It is the underdog of trying to conceive. In all the women that I've had conversations with who are trying to conceive, trying to optimize their fertility, and they've gone to all the appointments with their doctors and maybe even consulted with fertility specialists, no one is talking about cervical mucus.

Why do I care about cervical mucus in the context of fertility? Because it turns out, this very specific fluid that exists within your reproductive tract at a very [00:01:00] specific time of your menstrual cycle is what is needed for sperm cells to survive in your reproductive tract and can help them get to the ovulated egg faster.

And can even, in some cases, help the sperm cell enter its final phase of maturation that enables it to swim fast enough to actually penetrate the egg cell in order for successful fertilization. That is what we want. If we're about baby-making, that is our goal. And there is this magical fluid inside of ourselves that costs nothing to observe, nothing to keep track of And we're ignoring it, and I don't know why we're ignoring it because it is so valuable.

It is such a valuable marker. You don't have to [00:02:00] pay for the test strips from the chemist, you know, that they market as ovulation confirmers. Basal body temperature tracking is fantastic, but you don't even need to go out and buy a thermometer. You can start with observing what's in your underwear, what's on the toilet paper, what you feel as you are just walking around going about your day Let's talk about it.

Cervical mucus is a specific kind of fluid that is produced by cells in your cervix. You know that thing, that part of us, that we often tend to forget about and we only think about in the context of getting the reminder every five years to do our Pap smear, to check for HPV, to make sure we don't have cervical cancer?

Yeah, that fun part of our body, the cervix. There are so many functions of the cervix, so many wonderful things that it does, but today we're gonna hone in on its [00:03:00] production of cervical mucus. So inside your cervix, you have these different what we call crypts. So if you imagine like a, imagine a vertical tunnel in your mind's eye, because the cervix is like a portal, so it's the portal between your vagina and your uterus.

It is the portal that sperm cells have to successfully travel through in order to even think about reaching an ovulated egg to fertilize. And on the walls of this portal, there are these little pockets, these little pockets that we call the cervical crypts. These pockets are made up of specialized tissue, different cervical cells, that produce different kinds of mucus.

What determines which cells will be activated and what kind of mucus will be produced is your hormones. Your hormone levels that fluctuate throughout your menstrual cycle. So the closer we get to ovulation, the closer we get to r- a release of that egg [00:04:00] cell once per menstrual cycle, the higher our estrogen levels go.

With higher estrogen levels, these cervical cells that produce this really fertile kind of fluid are sensitized and activated, and they are getting the message to produce this fluid. Before I get too much into that fertile kind of fluid, I want to tell you about cervical fluid in general and the different kinds and the different functions that they serve.

There are some cervical cells that will produce a fluid that is thicker and more dense, and this is the kind of fluid that will be most active at your non- fertile times of your cycle. Say you've ovulated, and your body is going off the idea that there is a chance that you have successfully conceived that cycle, and what your body wants to do is protect that fertilized egg at all costs. So these [00:05:00] denser, thicker kinds of cervical fluid actually form a plug at the opening of your cervix that prevents any other sperm from coming in and disrupting the environment, and also protects the cervix from any pathogens, any bacterial, fungal species, or viruses from coming in and potentially compromising that fertilized egg.

So there's that beautiful function of protection and filtration. You have this beautiful fluid that your cervix is producing without you even realizing that is filtering out crappy sperm cells and protecting your womb from invaders that could create an infection. How freaking beautiful?

Now let's go to the more fertile kind of fluid. This fluid will be present in what we call your fertile window. Your fertile window is the time in your menstrual cycle where, one, it's [00:06:00] possible for sperm to survive inside of you after ejaculation, and two, the time that your ovulated egg is available for fertilization.

Now, the maximum amount of time that sperm cells can survive in you is up to seven days. Five to seven days in ideal conditions. By default, our reproductive tract is acidic. It will kill sperm cells. But we've got this beautiful cervical fluid that can actually nourish them and protect them and keep them alive.

It makes our environment a bit more alkaline rather than acidic to prevent sperm die-off. Pretty cool. So that's five to seven th- days there for the sperm. On the other hand, our ovulated egg is viable to be fertilized for about 24 hours max, 48 hours in cases where there has been a double ovulation, which is incredibly, incredibly rare.[00:07:00]

But on average, it's about 17 hours. So we've got this window of about eight days max, so seven days accounting for sperm to be able to potentially survive inside of us, and we've got the one to two days when our egg is able to be fertilized And in this fertile window, as our estrogen levels rise, as we're approaching ovulation, specific cells in our cervix are getting stimulated to produce this kind of fluid that is very liquefied.

It's watery, it's slippery, it's lubricative, and it helps nourish sperm cells. So during this fertile window, there will be some of that more dense mucus present to help filter out the poor quality sperm. We love that. But this more fertile kind of fluid actually creates these swimming lanes almost. So imagine you're picturing that portal.

You've got the crypts on the [00:08:00] side. And there's, like, the dense kind of mucus in some pockets that's trapping sperm. But there are these clear channels in between these pockets of the dense mucus. And once sperm get in those channels, if they're swimming well enough and if they have okay, uh, morphology, like how they're shaped, they are able to enter that channel, and they have, like, a super highway to easily get up through the rest of the cervix and reach the uterus more easily.

That gets them closer to an ovulated egg faster. We fricking love that. That's what we want. If we're baby making, that is what we want to happen. This kind of fluid, contains fructose, which actually gives the sperm cells a source of energy. And as I mentioned before, this specific quality, of mucus can actually help sperm cells get to that final stage of sperm maturation, which is what we call capacitation, which actually gives them the burst of energy [00:09:00] to swim faster and penetrate the wall of our egg cell.

That's what we need for fertilization to occur. Oh my fricking God, this stuff is so cool. Now, you might be wondering, okay, so my body's doing this. How, how do I begin to track this? What, what the hell do I need to do? It is easy to track. It can take some time to get into the swing of it, first to get into, like, a habit of keeping track every day, but it can also take some time to tune in and get to know the different sensations and how they translate into your fertility.

So the cool thing about cervical mucus, unlike ovulation predictor kits, unlike basal body temperature even, cervical mucus is your real-time indicator of fertility. It gives you valuable information on the day about your fertile potential. If you have the more [00:10:00] fertile quality fluid, you are more likely to conceive.

There was some research done, uh, in the first three months of trying to conceive, women and couples who had an awareness of cervical mucus and were tracking their cervical mucus and had some training in it, conceived faster than the women and couples who did not have this information. So this is really, really powerful information to have.

To track this successfully, there are two simple things that you are going to want to, uh, tune into and keep track of. I highly recommend an app called Read Your Body to track all things menstrual cycles and f- cervical fluid in particular. These two things: sensation and appearance. Sensation is literally how it feels at any given moment, at any point in the day, how it feels at your vulva.

You may notice this [00:11:00] sensation just as you're walking around, or you may notice this sensation more obviously when you wipe with toilet paper after using the toilet, whether it's for urination or doing a poop. When you wipe a piece of toilet paper across your vulva, you will feel a few different things.

You will either feel a sense of dryness, and all you'll see on the toilet paper is maybe a bit of urine that you're wiping up, and it will feel dry as you are wiping over your vulva. Other times, you may feel what we would call smooth. So there's, like, a bit of moisture there, but it wasn't, like, a really, strong, obvious sensation.

And in some cases, you will wipe over your vulva, and you will feel this overtly slippery sensation. The slippery sensation is what we associate with what we call peak cervical mucus. That is the kind of mucus that holds the most fertile, supportive qualities. That is the [00:12:00] kind of mucus that gives the sperm cells those superhighways, that helps nourish the sperm cells.

That is what we're looking out for. Now, I talk about sensation first. You might be like, "Okay, well, tell me what this mucus looks like. Like, what do I look out for?" I focus on sensation first because you only need a little bit of cervical mucus to feel a sensation, but you need a lot more mucus in order to see it.

And all we need to conceive successfully is a little bit of that mucus. So I encourage women to tune into sensation as the primary indicator of observing their cervical fluid for that day. My recommendation here is to check at every chance you get, every time you go to the toilet, every time you remember as you're walking around, and sometimes you might not even have to remember because you'll be walking around, and you'll be like, "Oh, my gosh, I, I feel wet as I'm walking around."

How you're gonna track that in your [00:13:00] app is the-- using the words dry, moist, wet, or slippery. Just four easy words to help categorize the sensation that you felt. This can be the sensation when you're walking around or the sensation when you wipe with toilet paper. The second thing we look at is what we look at, its appearance.

It's what we see in terms of actual fluid that is visible. So you're doing your toilet paper checks, and so you wipe across your vulva, and then you can look at the toilet paper. And you might not see-- there might be times where it felt dry to wipe over, and then you don't see much on the toilet paper.

There might be times where it feels smooth or a little bit damp as you wipe over your vulva, and then you look at it, and maybe there's a bit of just creamy, thicker kind of fluid or mucus. And maybe you notice that in your underwear as well. You see, like, white stains in your underwear, the thing that we've called discharge forever.

More often than [00:14:00] not, it's cervical fluid. There are some cases where it's not cervical fluid, and we'll cover those a little bit at the end. And then there'll be times where you might wipe and you feel the slippery sensation, oh, and then you take a look, and there is this clear looking snot kind of thing on the toilet paper, and you are like, "Did that just come out of my body?

What the hell?" That is peak mucus. That is the cervical mucus that sperm cells love. That is the cervical mucus that is trying to help you make a baby and successfully conceive. So that kind of peak mucus that is indicative of, like, being closest to ovulation, uh, will be any parts clear. It will be able to stretch more than one inch, so it has this stretchy quality.

It also has this quality where it can, like, hang off the toilet paper on its own, or it can, like, hang off your fingers if you pick it up. And I [00:15:00] encourage people to get comfortable with what is coming out of them. Feel free to touch and feel. It's your own body. This is nothing scary. This is nothing, nothing foreign.

This is all coming from you, okay? And the other quality about peak mucus is that it will have an intensely wet or a slippery sensation that accompanies it when it is present. Now, is sensation always going to line up with appearance? Not necessarily. You could have a dry wiping sensation and then see a little bit of creamy something something, on the toilet paper, for example.

You could, see, that clear, snotty-like mucus on the toilet paper, but maybe you didn't have the slippery sensation. Maybe you just felt wet, or you felt a little bit damp or moist. What we're looking for are the days of any kind of fertile quality. So whether it looks fertile or the sensation is fertile, we are interested in that.

So whether [00:16:00] it's feels slippery, and has the f- fertile kind of appearance, like it looks like raw egg white, some people even compare it to, it's any parts clear. It can stretch beyond one inch. or whether it's just one of those signs, that still counts, and that is what you are going to track in your app of choice.

And again, I highly, highly recommend Read Your Body. I just find it's, of all the cycle tracking apps I've used, this is the most clear, helpful, beautifully illustrated one. Has a beautiful interface, very easy to use. I love it. Now, what I will say, the last time I was training a fertility client in cervical mucus, before I asked her what she thought of some of the information I shared with her, I said, "Let me say this."

I'll say all this to women, and most commonly, the first response I get is, "Okay, I get the theory, but, like, I don't think I have that kind of mucus. I don't think I have that fertile kind of slippery, [00:17:00] stretchy, snotty, clear, egg white-like mucus." And what I say to that is once you start paying attention, observing every day at every opportunity, you will be shocked at how much you notice.

You will be shocked at how quickly you can pick up on a pattern throughout a menstrual cycle. And so it changes from after your period, it develops a bit, maybe it gets a bit, you know, it goes from dry to moist, and then you're getting more creamy or you're seeing more, more of that discharge appearance in your underwear.

And then you get-- you start to feel a bit more wet, and then maybe you have one or two days of slippery, and then after ovulation, it goes back to just feeling a bit moist or damp, until your next period arrives. You will be amazed at how quickly you pick up on that pattern. And so I said that to this client, and she was like, "That's exactly what I was thinking."

Like, this is great and all, but I don't think I have that kind of mucus. Just start [00:18:00] tracking. I promise you will be amazed. Personally, for me, I was on the pill for a lot of my teenage years, so there was a time before I learnt this, and I, I learnt this stuff at 18, so I did start tracking pretty early, and I've been tracking my cervical mucus just about every day for 13 years, which is, makes me sound old.

And before I learnt this, I was noticing some mucus, especially when I was wiping after using the toilet, and I actually thought it was coming out of my butt. I actually thought that mucus was, like, associated with, like, my IBS and, like, the weird bowel movements that I was having and the digestive trouble that I was having.

When I learnt the theory and I started tracking it alongside my menstrual cycle, I was like, "Oh my God, it's actually, it's coming out of my vagina." That it's not coming out of my anus. Just being frank with you, uh, because you might notice the same thing. You might be like, "Oh, [00:19:00] yeah, I have noticed this sometimes on the toilet paper, but I just associated it with pooping."

Because any time we activate the pelvic floor with urinating or pooping or doing some inte- intense exercise or moving it around, any time we activate the pelvic floor, that will help encourage cervical fluid to get to the opening of our vagina, right? Which just makes it more obvious.

So we are more likely to notice these larger amounts of mucus, and especially the fertile quality mucus, after we do a poop or after we use the bathroom. So that is totally, totally normal. Now, I encourage you to check multiple times throughout the day because if you just check once a day, you could be missing your peak time.

You could be missing p- peak mucus, because you're not gonna have the same kind of mucus all throughout a day, right? You're going to have, changes throughout a day. It's not just gonna be one note all, for all day, for 24 hours. So you might [00:20:00] go to the toilet, say, five times a day, and four times that you check, you just feel a bit moist or damp.

But one of those times, you might get a slippery wipe and then notice some egg white-like mucus on the toilet paper. That's your peak observation. And imagine if you hadn't checked that fifth time. You would have missed that, and that would have been such valuable information that is a game changer to your trying to conceive journey.

So that's why it's important to check multiple times a day. I also highly encourage you to check, uh, not just in one half of the day, because sometimes it can take a while for that mucus to get to the opening of the vagina, like I said. So movement is required, activity is required. You might not notice anything in the morning.

Sometimes you certainly will, but you might notice that it takes a bit of time. Once you're up and moving, then you get a more obvious sensation or a more obvious appearance observation. How does this, how does this come into your fertility journey? How do we use this information to [00:21:00] help us conceive?

There's a lot of nitty-gritty that goes into this. If you're looking for direct, tailored-to-you training on this method of assisting conception, you can book in for a Free Fertility Call, and we will chat all things cervical mucus and how it relates to you and talk about your next steps there. But here's what I'll say that you can get started with ASAP.

Chances of conception are highest on the days where you have peak fertile mucus. So any day that you have a slippery sensation, any day that you have an intensely wet sensation, it might even feel watery. Any day that you notice your mucus is any parts clear, is able to stretch more than one inch, that is go time.

They are your days where con- chances of conception will be highest. Now, I wanna note: cervical mucus does not confirm that you have [00:22:00] ovulated. A cervical mucus pattern doesn't confirm ovulation. All it tells us is that your estrogen levels are getting high enough that it's, your body is able to produce that kind of fluid.

It's an indication that your body is attempting to ovulate, that your body is gearing up for ovulation. But it doesn't confirm that it will definitely happen. It doesn't predict it accurately. We just have to go based on what we're observing in the day. That's where it can be really helpful to pair this cervical mucus tracking with something like basal body temperature tracking, which is exactly what I teach people in Fertile Foundations, my program and course for those trying to conceive and optimize their fertility.

Because basal body temperature will help confirm that you have ovulated, so that's where we really beautifully narrow down that fertile window. Remember, that will be about eight days max per cycle. That is the window where conception will be at all possible, and cervical mucus is gonna be the biggest indicator [00:23:00] of accurately identifying that window for you.

We are not going based on cycle days. We are not saying, "Oh, yep, your fertile window opens on cycle day eight and goes through till cycle day 16." No. We have to listen to your body. You have to observe your body in real time, every day. I promise, you will be blown away by what you start to observe, the patterns you start to track, okay?

And if you are keen to learn more about this, I am so keen to tell you everything I know about cervical mucus, helping you interpret your own charts when you're tracking this in a chart alongside your menstrual cycle. It can be a lot. It can be a lot to navigate at first, but this is the thing that I want every bloody woman and couple who are trying to conceive, they need to know about cervical mucus, and I am here to talk about it for days, my girls, days.

So if you're interested to learn more, the link will be below to book in your [00:24:00] free Fertility Clarity Call. Tell me a bit about what is going on for you, and I will tell you what I think the next best steps are for your fertility journey specifically. And if you're interested in the specific step-by-step training for observing cervical mucus, tracking your basal body temperatures, that is also available as well.

And I've also done another podcast over on the Oh My Menses podcast. I did a whole episode talking about all kinds of vaginal fluid and discharge, including cervical fluid, also including arousal fluid, and just different things that can come out of our vagina that no one has taught us about. Why is no one talking about stuff that comes out of our, our vagina?

Considering how much comes out of our vagina, can we be honest? So I'll also link that down below if you want a little bit more background information. If you want to understand the difference between cervical fluid and other kinds of fluid that we may notice, I highly recommend checking out that episode.

In the meantime, stay [00:25:00] tuned for the next episode of The Fertility Files. Next episode, hmm, what are we going to be talking about? We might be talking about testing for preconception. We might be talking about prenatal supplements, or we might be talking about libido. Hmm, who knows what episode's gonna come next?

Have to stay tuned. Thank you for listening to this one, and I will see you on the next episode of The Fertility Files.