thankyou so much! makes scence!, and we have allready been saving up money to have a kid for months now, and now that im starting to understand my cycle a little more, i can start trying, (: thanks so much again
-chantal
Ok, I'll try to help the best I can.
A female will ovulate before she ever gets a menstrual cycle. This is what will actually trigger you to get a period. Anyways, a female will generally ovulate 14 days BEFORE her period. (Common misconception is that it's 14 days AFTER, but this is not true for the reasons I already mentioned) In preparation, your body has already built up a thickened uterine lining for if the egg is fertilized. Once you do ovulate, the egg is only viable for 12-24 hours. Sperm on the other hand can survive for 5-7 days in the female body, so a female "technically" has 5 days she's fertile before she ovulates. If the egg remains unfertilized, it will then be reabsorbed back into the body and she will then shed the uterine lining in the form of a menstrual cycle. If the egg IS fertilized, it then will travel down and embed itself in the uterine lining and start to grow.
Your first step is to learn and understand your body and cycles. If you have the typical 28 day cycle, you will generally ovulate on day 14. To learn how long yours is, you just count. The first day you start bleeding is Cycle Day (CD) 1. You then count until you get your next one. However long it takes is how long yours is. You then count 14 days backwards from the date your next expected one is, and this is usually when you ovulate. For best results, you should have sex every other day leading up till ovulation, and then 2 days after. If you have irregular cycles, you want to just have sex every other day starting 3 days after your cycle ends for about 2 weeks or so.
A pregnancy test can accurately detect pregnancy 2 weeks after sex/ovulation. A female does NOT have a period while pregnant for the above reasons. You can bleed, but it doesn't mean it's a period. It means you're bleeding for whatever reasons.
I do however encourage both you and your partner to plan other things before you have a child, such as marriage and make sure you're financially stable. Children are very expensive, and VERY stressful. They cause problems in even the most stable relationships, and weak ones don't survive the stress.