More often than not we hear how powerful the male sperm is, but we hardly hear about the female egg. We thought that we would do some investigating ourselves to see what could find about the female egg that wasn’t already commonly known.

We came across some interesting information about the female egg that we just had to share!

Fact #1: Women Make New Eggs Throughout Their Lifetime

Old biology textbooks had taught us that we were born with the finite amount of eggs that we will need for our lifetime. It usually is reported that women have approximately 7 million eggs when present in the mother’s womb and the number decreases to 700,000 by the time she reaches puberty. Recently scientists have discovered that the human ovary may have the capability to continue to produce new eggs through a women’s reproductive years. Further research will need to be conducted to confirm this theory.

Fact #2: Human Egg Size is Relatively Large

In case you didn’t know already, but a female egg is the biggest cell that a woman has in her body.  It is roughly the size of sand grain, which we can obviously see normally without a microscope. To put the egg size into perspective a bit here are some comparisons. It is 4x larger than a skin cell, 26x larger than a blood cell, and 16x larger than sperm!

Fact #3: An Egg Needs Time to Mature

Most eggs present in the ovaries before menarche are immature. Some eggs are dormant for years before they even start to mature. Some eggs will never mature and just die. In order for an egg to complete their maturation through ovulation, they begin their final stage of maturation 150 days before they are released from the ovary.

Fact #4:  An Egg Has Short Life Span After Ovulation

Once it has been released through ovulation, it can live up to 12 to 24 hours in the fallopian tube. If conception is carry out successfully, the newly fertilized egg will move from the fallopian tube to implant on the uterus 6 to 10 days later. And if the egg isn’t fertilized, it will simply deteriorate and be discharged during the next menstruation cycle. The female egg can live for less than a day meanwhile the sperm can live up to 1 to 5 days in the fallopian tube.

Fact #5: An Egg is Selective of The Sperm That Fertilizes It

Most of us think that the sperm does all the work when it comes to fertilization, however, the egg can be selective as to who she chooses to fertilize her. The egg prefers sperm with intact DNA which softens the outer layer to allow specific sperm to enter. Not all sperm is treated equally, unfortunately. And once the sperm is in the egg, it will harden its shell to not let other sperm to enter.

Fact #6: Multiple Ovulation is Quite Common

Multiple Ovulation is when more than one egg is released during a menstrual cycle. This can happen up to 10% of cycles which means that women can release two or more eggs a year. And when two eggs are released and fertilized it produces fraternal twins. It is important to note that when this happens, it is considered as a singular ovulatory event because both of the eggs are released within a 24 hours.

We hope that you learned something new about female eggs. We did! Catch ya next time!