9 Month Miracle - Watch animations to see how a baby develops from a simple cell

Conception

During sexual intercourse, sperm are released into the vagina near the cervix, which is the entrance to the uterus. The sperm travel through the cervix, into uterus and up the fallopian tubes. After being release from an ovary, the egg cell moves through the fallopian tube by tiny cilia that line the tube's walls. The egg cell only survives for approximately 24 hours after ovulation. Of the millions of sperm that are released into the naturally acid environment of the woman's reproductive tract, relatively few will survive to encounter the egg cell. When one of the sperm cells finally succeeds in breaking through the egg cell's outer membrane, the egg cell forms a protective barrier preventing other sperm cells from entering. This ensures that only one sperm cell fertilizes the egg cell. Next, the sperm cell releases its nucleus containing the man's chromosomes. After several hours, it unites with the nucleus of the egg cell, which contains the woman's chromosomes. When the two nuclei fuse, their genetic material combines together to create a fertilized egg cell which is called a zygote.

Conception

BookmarkBookmark

Review Date: 7/4/2019

Reviewed By: John D. Jacobson, MD, Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Loma Linda University School of Medicine, Loma Linda Center for Fertility, Loma Linda, CA. Also reviewed by David Zieve, MD, MHA, Medical Director, Brenda Conaway, Editorial Director, and the A.D.A.M. Editorial team.

The information provided herein should not be used during any medical emergency or for the diagnosis or treatment of any medical condition. A licensed medical professional should be consulted for diagnosis and treatment of any and all medical conditions. Links to other sites are provided for information only -- they do not constitute endorsements of those other sites. No warranty of any kind, either expressed or implied, is made as to the accuracy, reliability, timeliness, or correctness of any translations made by a third-party service of the information provided herein into any other language.

© 1997- A.D.A.M., a business unit of Ebix, Inc. Any duplication or distribution of the information contained herein is strictly prohibited.

All content on this site including text, images, graphics, audio, video, data, metadata, and compilations is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. You may view the content for personal, noncommercial use. Any other use requires prior written consent from Ebix. You may not copy, reproduce, distribute, transmit, display, publish, reverse-engineer, adapt, modify, store beyond ordinary browser caching, index, mine, scrape, or create derivative works from this content. You may not use automated tools to access or extract content, including to create embeddings, vectors, datasets, or indexes for retrieval systems. Use of any content for training, fine-tuning, calibrating, testing, evaluating, or improving AI systems of any kind is prohibited without express written consent. This includes large language models, machine learning models, neural networks, generative systems, retrieval-augmented systems, and any software that ingests content to produce outputs. Any unauthorized use of the content including AI-related use is a violation of our rights and may result in legal action, damages, and statutory penalties to the fullest extent permitted by law. Ebix reserves the right to enforce its rights through legal, technological, and contractual measures.