What is the average time it takes to conceive?

What is the average time it takes to conceive?

Richard Paulson (Chief, Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility, USC) gives expert video advice on: What factors can prevent me from becoming pregnant?; What are the leading causes of infertility among women?; What causes male infertility? and more...

Human fertility depends to a great extent on the age of the woman, and really, everything is driven by that. When I say young couples what I mean by that is a couple in whom the woman is under the age of 35. What we know is that a young couple have an approximately 20% chance of getting pregnant during any one ovulatory cycle. So, assuming the woman is having normal cycles and the couple is having intercourse at the correct time of month, 20% of those couples will get pregnant in any one month. If you put that onto a mathmatical table you can show that about half of those couples will conceive within 3 months, so 50% will conceive at the end of 3 months, and another 50% of those that are left, will conceive during the next 3 months. By the end of 6 months, 75% of the couples are pregnant, assuming everyone is normal. In other words, if you have not conceived in the end of 6 months, you can be perfectly normal and just be in that one out of four couples who is going to take a little bit longer. That is why we normally say, infertility is after one year.