how to inseminate at home

these are instructions that oneofhismoms.wordpress.com posted. we found them very helpful.

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
"Taking Charge of your Fertility" and/or www.fertilityfriend.com
A basal thermometer, ovulation predictor kits, speculum (optional… the speculum)
A good thermos
Hot water
A meat thermometer
Protective eye wear(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 endocrinologist 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 Celsius, 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.

(thank you oneofhismoms!-kat)

dpo5

(days past ovulation-5) ok so i kept saying that i would blog about the insemination, i just wasn't feeling inspired and mom was in town. maybe it'll flow once i get started.

our package arrived on friday. we held off on opening the tank until we were ready. i did opks throughout the day, and by evening my test line was getting darker. saturday morning, it was much darker than the indicator line. woohoo! ovulation! my bbt had dropped significantly, also. i felt ready.

anna encouraged me to eat and shower before we did anything. i didn't want to:) i just wanted to stay in bed and get started. of course my lovely wifey was right. i would have gotten grumpy and hungry if i hadn't eaten.

first step was opening up the canister. it looked like it had been around the block a few times:) but hey the vials were nice and frozen. the vials themselves were sooo small! the amount of sperm inside measured to about 1 cc (looks like about a quarter of an inch). anna and i donned some winter gloves and sunglasses. we were told in the instructions that the vials should be handled with cryogloves and protective glasses. we stumbled around the internet for a while on friday night trying to figure out what to do, if these things were necessary or what. luckily on oneofhismoms.wordpress.com the author had posted her own instructions. they matched up perfectly with our official instructions with a few adjustments. thus, we wore ski gloves and sunglasses.

even with the gloves on, i could feel how cold the vial was. i held it, upright, in my hands for a while till the frost dissipated. then we set it in a clean shot glass so it was upright. we got our wee syringe, a plate with a paper towel, and a meat thermometer.

on to the bit more personal bit (don't worry becky it's not that personal!) :) after the vial had defrosted, it had cooled down enough to put in my bra. the sperm needed to be warmed up to body temperature, approximately. that was also the reason for the meat thermometer, but it was too large to use in the small sample we had. i set myself up with pillow under my hips.

afterwards, i stayed in bed for around an hour. after about 20 mins i tried rolling to my right and left side to move things around a bit. mostly, i just laid on my back. everything went very smoothly. we felt successful. i hope we were.

the second insem didn't go as well. we were cold and on an air mattress. also i think a little bit of the sample spilled out. oops.

now for how i was/am feeling. after the first insem, i had some mild cramping, as if i was going to get my period. i couldn't think of anything else it would be related to, and cramping does occur for some women after insem. the second time, i fell asleep soon after so i have no idea if i cramped. i haven't noticed much else. i have been rather grumpy in the evening the past two days. kind of snappy with anna. yesterday, i had a weird pinch feeling in my stomach/uterus area on my right side. it didn't go away with stretching, just had to wait it out. it didn't hurt necessarily, just uncomfortable. could be baby-related, could be gas haha:) it was a different feeling though. i'm trying to not obsess about it.

i'm going to post the "how to inseminate at home" instructions from oneofhismoms in my next blog cause this one is getting a little long :)