Hi ladies :) I haven't posted on here in a couple of months but wanted to come back and share some news, I'm not sure if it will help! I got my BFP on the fifth cycle after some interesting research about how sperm swim.
I don't know if you know this, maybe it's a "duh" fact, but apparently sperm can't swim along the vaginal wall. They can only swim across the cervix and in your cervical mucus. This isn't usually an issue for natural sex as the penis shoots out sperm at speed towards the cervix, so that's where most of them land. With AI, if you have a long vagina or don't produce a lot of cervical mucus, it can make things tricker.
With my successful cycle, I bought a cheap speculum from eBay, laid down on the bed with my legs up against the wall and managed to do some acrobatics holding a mirror and my phone (for the torch) in one hand, and located my cervix. I wound the speculum open so it stayed open and I was still able to visualise my cervix without holding the speculum. Then with my free hand, I dropped the sperm from the syringe directly onto my cervix - it was tricky but I managed to actually see it land on my cervix. I waited a minute or two and very gently pulled out the speculum an inch or two so I didn't disturb any of the sperm, then closed it and pulled it out.
I am convinced that's why I got my BFP this cycle, the sperm went exactly where they needed to be. I was using soft cups before and I just don't think they were bringing the sperm high enough because I've never had huge amounts of fertile cervical mucus either. I also did this at O-2 so it wasn't exactly great timing, but it still worked!
I really hope this helps someone and I'm sorry if I've said something a bit obvious, I just know how confused I was about the best method to use. This one was tricky and would be better with a partner to help, but I managed it on my own.
Hope everyone is looking forward to the long Easter weekend! I am 5 weeks on Saturday so still early days but I'm absolutely over the moon :)