How To Inseminate At Home

A Guide for the Future Lesbian Family, or Single-Mom-By-Choice

(I’ve been teaching my second-grade class how to write a “How-To” book, so I’ll follow that format. I’m writing this because I have so many folks who find my site by searches, who might like to hear it. My most-viewed post ever is The Pros and Cons of IUI vs. DIY. So here’s a little DIY elaboration. I have to entertain myself somehow while waiting to go off birth control pills!)

You will need:

• Good health insurance (optional)
• A wad of cash or credit for sperm, or a really nice, disease-free donor, who seems like he’ll never get all weird on you and who doesn’t mind pleasuring himself at the drop of a hat
• A medicine syringe (needle-less, used for giving liquid medicine to an infant) easily purchased at most drug stores
• Fertility chart
• This great book and/or www.fertilityfriend.com
• A basal thermometer, ovulation predictor kits, speculum (optional… the speculum)
• A good thermos
• Hot water
• A meat thermometer
• Protective eyewear (cheap sunglasses will suffice)
• Protective gloves (got any ski gloves?)
• Some pillows
• Some candles, wine, music or other romantic accoutrement (optional)
• A towel
• Some paper towels
• A tray
• A ridiculous and seemingly endless fount of patience

(Whew!) Read all the steps before you begin.

1. First, get to know your menstrual cycle well. This will take several months. Use fertility friend.com or Taking Charge of Your Fertility to figure out when you are ovulating. Read it carefully and be sure you know what you are doing before you spend any money on baby juice. Oh, and invest in ovulation predictor kits. Use them. They usually work.

2. Next, if you have the optional good health insurance, go to a reproductive endocrinoligist and get a fertility work-up. This will take one cycle. Be aware that she or he may tell you you have some issues. This step is totally optional, but I wish I had done it in the first place. For reals.

3. Next, ditch the RE.

4. When you feel secure in your understanding of your cycle, acquire sperm. Hopefully, you have found the source of your sperm while waiting the several months to figure out your cycle. Some sperm banks take quite a while to set up your account, so allow time for that and get it over with before you are ready to inseminate. My sperm bank takes two days to ship the baby juice from the time you order it. If you are using a known donor, let him know you’ll be needing his services soon.

4a. Inseminate when you get your first positive OPK, and again 8-10 hours later. The idea is that you should ovulate within 36 hours of the positive OPK. The frozen sperm lasts up to 24 hours. The fresh should last several days. So if you insem twice in the first ten hours, you’ll probably have sperm in you when the follicle releases the egg. If you don’t feel absolutely sure about that, you could extend it to 15 or 20 hours after, to make a bigger window of sperm. Window of sperm. Ha.

5. Set up a tray with paper towels, your thermos, and your syringe, and possibly a glass of water or green tea on it. Stack up some pillows near the center of your bed. Cover it with a towel.
The next few steps are for use with frozen sperm. Skip them if you have fresh stuff.

6. Heat some water to the exact temperature for thawing the sperm. (I believe it is 35 degrees Celcius, but check somewhere else… our sperm bank sent a paper with the temperature on it.) Measure the temp with your meat thermometer. Pour the heated water into the good thermos. Put a lid on it.

7. Take the sperm out of the liquid nitrogen tank. Put on your cheap sunglasses and your ski gloves first. Put the sperm vial into the heated thermos (keep it closed!) And let thaw for 10-15 minutes.

8. Snuggle with your honey or your teddy bear. Get yourself prepped for the insemination… as though you were having sex (or have sex… whichever you can.)

9. Once the thawing time is up, get the medicine syringe and extract the droplet of sperm from the teeny-tiny vial. I suggest you practice this beforehand with some other, far-less expensive liquid.

Ok, you can start reading again if you have fresh sperm. Put the fresh sperm into the syringe.

10. Lay back with your pelvis raised up on the pillow stack. You, or your partner, insert the baby juice syringe into your vagina. Get yourself worked up. Push the plunger. Try to have an orgasm. It is said to help the sperm get up inside you a bit further. Plus, it feels really good. Put the syringe onto the paper towel on the tray. Use extra paper towels to wipe the stanky stuff (I mean, baby juice) from your hands, if any got on.

11. Stay there propped up on the pillow stack for a while. We always stayed for at least fifteen minutes. I do know of people who rotated their bodies, like a chicken on a set-it-and-forget-it rotisserie. I prefer to sit still and snuggle and imagine the formation of our future child.

12. Clean everything well. Repeat steps 5-11 in 10 hours.

13. Spend the next two weeks trying not to obsess. Try to ignore every little twinge in your body. Good luck with that.

14. If this fails several times and you think you might die, call your RE back and read my archives. Get ready for trying to get pregnant at the doctor’s office! Hopefully, you will get pregnant the very first time and be spared lots and lots of drama and suckatude.

Disclaimer: I don’t claim to know what I am talking about. What works for some does not work for all. No. If it doesn’t work, I won’t pay for your lost sperm. My credit card is almost maxed out, honey. Sorry. Do read everything you can about this and get lots of opinions. This did work when my honey got pregnant. It did not work for me. Talk to your doctor. I wish you luck.

This post is dedicated to my good friend, DJ D Nice (or was it, DJ B Good?) and her future prodigy, Hurston. May you be bloated pregnant and suffering from sciatica quickly and without many two week waits.