A slippery sensation most women are never taught to name

Have you ever felt a sudden, slippery wetness and rushed to check for your period, only to find nothing there at all? Toni Weschler says this happens to almost every woman at some point, usually while she's doing something completely unrelated, and it is almost never talked about, so it lands as confusing or even alarming.

What's actually happening is cervical fluid, and Weschler treats understanding it as one of the most useful things a woman can learn about her own body. Cervical fluid is produced by the cervix under the influence of rising estrogen, and it plays the same biological role for a woman that seminal fluid plays for a man: nourishing sperm, buffering them from the vagina's normally acidic environment, and giving them a medium to swim through. The difference is that a man produces this fluid every day, because he is fertile every day, while a woman only produces it for the handful of days surrounding ovulation, because that is the only time she is fertile.

Weschler describes the pattern as a predictable continuum rather than a random event. After a period ends, most women notice several dry or non-wet days, what she calls the Basic Infertile Pattern. As estrogen climbs, that shifts to something stickier, like the paste from a childhood classroom, then to a creamy, lotion-like consistency, and finally to the most fertile quality of all: eggwhite, so named because it resembles raw egg white, stretching without breaking and leaving a lubricative feeling that can last a day or two beyond what you can actually see. Weschler recounts one client, Barbara, who as a young teenager was so horrified by this fertile fluid that she wadded up toilet paper and hurled it at what she assumed was some kind of foreign growth. Barbara grew up to become a fertility awareness instructor herself.

The last day of that slippery, lubricative quality is called the Peak Day, and it is the single most fertile day of the cycle, because it means ovulation is imminent or has just happened. Once you can read that pattern, a sensation that once felt mysterious or embarrassing becomes simply information, delivered by your own body, every single cycle.

Begin simply by paying attention a few times a day to what you notice at the vaginal opening, whether it feels dry, sticky, creamy, or slippery, and what shows up when you wipe. Give yourself permission to watch this change over the course of a full cycle instead of expecting it to make sense right away, because it follows a continuum from dry, to sticky, to creamy, to a slippery, stretchy eggwhite quality as you approach ovulation. Once you can look back and spot the last day that fluid or sensation felt wet and lubricative, you've found your Peak Day, your most fertile day of the cycle. And as you get more familiar with your own normal pattern, you'll also get better at spotting when something is genuinely off, an itch, an odor, a discomfort that doesn't fit the pattern, rather than mistaking your own healthy biology for a problem.