Some women become pregnant without much effort. But for some, conceiving a child can prove to be a difficult affair and health practitioners often fail to provide a satisfactory answer regarding their chances of getting pregnant.
Providing a solution, researchers from the University of Warwick and the London School of Economics have developed a mathematical model that can predict probability of woman of getting pregnant and the period she has to wait to fulfill her motherhood dreams.
The model works on the woman's number of menstrual cycles and length of the period she was trying for a baby.
"Many couples are not aware that chance plays a big role in getting pregnant. People expect to get pregnant when they want to, so finding out that it isn't happening can be a shock. Approaching a doctor about such a personal matter is daunting. So, knowing when is the right time to start investigation, would be a useful step forward," Professor Geraldine Hartshorne of Warwick Medical School, said in a news release.
"We can't work out exactly when, or if, a woman will become pregnant - but this analysis can predict her chances, and give a percentage estimate of pregnancy in the next cycle."
So according to the formula, if a woman is 35 and failed to get pregnant even after trying for six months, chances of pregnancy will be below 10 percent in the next cycle.
The whole model is based on a formula (probabilities calculated by adding previous information and new evidence) invented by Thomas Bayes, an 18th century Presbyterian minister.
Apart from that, according to the researchers, age of a woman also plays a major role in her ability to become pregnant easily and the pregnancy chances come down with an increase in age.
The findings have been published in the open access journal PLOS ONE .
