Home insemination - turkey baster style?

[TwattingDog]

DH and I are looking at home insemination via a donor (male infertility).

He has a friend who is willing to be a known donor, and it would be via assisted not natural conception.

I'm looking into contacts etc at the moment.

Does anyone have any tips? Where did you start with all of this?

I'm 38, had a full MOT, everything is working well, no idea about egg reserves etc. Can't afford a clinic.

Bump

Is there any reason you’re not doing this through a clinic? If neither of you have kids you would be eligible. From a safety perspective but also I think doing it via a clinic offers you far greater legal protections than doing it yourself, where the donor can be regarded as the legal father etc

Mostly down to the lack of attempts we'll be eligible for on the NHS. I really don't want to go through stimulated cycles either.

Add in we would prefer to use fresh sperm than frozen (higher chance of conception); we'd like a known donor for the child in later life; and the donor resembles DH quite a lot.

As I understand it, my DH will be the legal parent as he will be consenting to this, will be on the birth certificate, and there will be no sexual intercourse leading to conception.

We may be being too idealist....

And yes, no children already

Massive legal minefield you are jumping into here. Unless you get this in a legal contract the genetic father can change his mind later and go after access, try to stop you moving away etc. Just have a google to see how many parents have got into sticky situations where the donor says they had a different agreement. Even if unsuccessful it is stressful and so much more expensive.

And that's not even getting into insemination without medical screening. You don't even have evidence this person is fertile, let alone disease free.

He's fathered the children with his wife. We know the couple (military families) - it's altruistic reasons for donation.

I thought the law was very simple if DH and I are married, which we are?

And a big yes to STD screening, and discussions around medical history and familial history.

That should say three children above.

Legally (let's say things go wrong and various people fall out and money becomes short) he will be liable for child maintenance on the eyes of the government.

Would that still be the case if DH is the legal parent?

I believe he would have to formally adopt the child and then the donor would have no legal rights.

OP your DH won't be the legal parent, just your husband.

Thank you all, lots to consider. I've been into the HEA website and some lawyers pages and looked at lots of cases.

So for argument's sake, let's say we have the legal stuff sorted (don't worry we'll get proper legal advice!).

In practical terms of carrying out the act of insemination, has anyone done this with a private donor? How have you managed the process?

Did you use OPKs? Whether for frozen straws at home or not. How do you work with those?

I use an app to track my cycle and have done through years of TTC, so I'm certain it's fairly reliable. I have a good fixed cycle of 26-28 days.

As I understand the legalities here (IANAL, fyi), then provided you conceived via insemination and not sex, and your husband was on board, then you and your husband would be the legal parents. But, there have been some circumstances where known donors of children conceived outside a clinic setting have applied to be able to request contact with the court - idk how the court decided but I do know that they were given leave to bring the case. The general advice seems to be that mismatched expectations cause the biggest problems so it's good to work with someone specialist in this area of law and draw up an agreement between those involved - this wouldn't be legally binding but would give an indication of what was intended, if there was ever any dispute; and more importantly would help to minimise the chance of differing expectations in the first place.

Re: practicalities, how regular is your cycle?

Thank you Persipan, that's essentially where I had thought the law currently was.

My cycle is very regular, I've been tracking for years on an app. Excuse the awful twee colours etc. The 🌸 pictures are ovulation. Moon is anticipated period date for this month. Blood drops last period obv. ♥ Is for sex. Not much recently due to DH being on a ship (TMI).

Is that app based on temping or other data that you input, or is it just based on cycle lengths?

I input my periods but it predicts the ovulation dates, presumably based on the cycle length?

I'm really unfamiliar with temperatures, OPKs etc

OK. So, what I'd do if I were you would be to add in temping and opks for, say, 3 months, and see what picture that shows. (Not sure if that particular app allows you to; something like Fertility Friend definitely would.

Basically, at the moment the app is guessing when you're ovulating, and what would be very much preferable would be for you to have clear information on when it's actually happening.

OPKs measure the amount of LH (luteinising hormone) in your urine. This should 'surge' (ie increase a lot) sometime shortly before ovulation. You can get cheap tests online (or 5 for a quid in Poundland), or there are more expensive digital ones which monitor more than one hormone and give you more warning that ovulation is coming. OPKs are a way to predict that ovulation is likely to happen soon, but they can't confirm whether or not it has happened.

Temping - monitoring your basal body temperature - means taking your temperature at the same time every day, right when you wake up. Once you've ovulated, your body releases progesterone which causes your temperature to rise very slightly - so, monitored over time, you can see a pattern to indicate roughly when you ovulated. Temping is a way to confirm that you ovulated, and work out when.

With both of those bits of information, you'd be in a good place to work out when would be a good time in your cycle to plan an insemination.

That's really helpful, thank you so much! I really had no idea how that worked.

It will let me put in temperature - I hadn't really twigged to why until you asked about it above. There's also the free text section or the symptoms can be manually changed if needs be.

I'll go and start looking at OPKs and get a decent thermometer - mine is a bit unreliable.

I also tend to get a good "twang" of pain around the time I think I'm probably ovulating, which I've always associated with the process.

Have you been through all this?

I did home insemination with frozen sperm for a while, so not exactly the same but basically yes.

May I ask, how did it go for you? Did you use Cryos or another source for sperm? Tell me to butt out if you want!

Come over to this thread @TwattingDog - you'll get lots of advice there.

I've been doing home insemination with sperm from Cryos for the last four months - it seems the last lot worked! Mind you, we did IUI which really shouldn't be done outside a clinic, and can't be done with fresh sperm anyway (you need washed sperm).

You definitely need a bbt thermometer such as Femometer, which measures to 2 decimal points. Be warned though, to be accurate you need to measure as close to the same time each day, and after at least 3 hours solid sleep. I'm often woken early by my cat who will not wait patiently for me to temp before dealing with her, so my graphs aren't terribly accurate, but you can see a general pattern.

The other thing to say about temping is that sometimes the app can change it's mind after a while. So one month it had me ovulating on day 9, despite the OPKs not showing anything that early, which panicked me as we weren't planning on inseminating til day 14 which is when I normally ovulate. It stayed that way until my period came (which the app had the cheek of saying was late, having decided ovulation was so early) at which point it then moved ovulation to day 14. So do take the 'advice' from the app with a pinch of salt. There's a good FB group (BBT charting assistance, I think) which can help interpret if things are looking strange.

The ClearBlue Advanced test shows the Oestrogen surge which happens shortly before the LH surge, as well as the LH surge, so you get a warning. You can always use them until you get the flashing smiley, and then switch to the cheaper, LH only tests to save money!