Hi @Howcanthisbesodifficult . I can share our experience as a same sex female couple which might help. When we were looking to ttc as a same sex couple you had to self-fund 6 attempts at IUI before you were eligible for NHS treatment. My understanding is that the rules on that have changed now, but its worth confirming with your NHS board if you are expected to self-fund some cycles before becoming eligible for NHS treatment.
We went to a private clinic (GCRM) and I (as the person who we decided would be the genetic mother and carry) went through some basic fertility assessments (AMH test, HyCoSy) to check I was suitable (no issues found, normal AMH, no issue with tubes etc). We decided to purchase donor sperm from the European Sperm Bank rather than use a UK donor, as you get a lot more information about the donor and we felt we had more choice. So I don't know how long the wait would have been if you used a donor through your clinic and what options you would have for having a sibling from the same donor. If you use to European Sperm Bank, you buy a pregnancy slot (there are a limited number of pregnancy slots allowed for each donor, so e.g. only 10 families in the UK can use the same donor). When you purchase your pregnancy slot for a donor, you can put both you are your partners names down. That pregnancy slot is for you as a family, so if you and your partner both want to use the same donor you can, as you are one family. You then buy as many straws as you want (dependent on availability). The European sperm bank recommend purchasing 6 straws for the attempt at 1 child. We bought 6 straws initially. We did 4 attempts at medicated IUI (taking letrozole) with no success (using 1 straw of donor sperm each go), and we made the decision to move to IVF. When we moved to IVF we used an Access Fertility package to help fund our IVF journey. I responded very poorly to IVF stimulation, and there was a problem during my first IVF cycle at egg collection where they got far fewer eggs than expected. We only got 2 eggs, but both fertilised and made it to day 5. Our fresh embryo transfer resulted in BFN and our following frozen embryo transfer resulted in a chemical pregnancy. We did a second IVF cycle with a different protocol using a freeze-all approach (no fresh transfer at the end of the cycle) to try to help given the issues with the first cycle. We got 6 eggs, all fertilised and made it to day 5, but only 3 were suitable to freeze. Our first FET transfer from this batch resulted in our DD.
So it took us 4 IUIs, and 3 embryo transfers to conceive, with 2 embryos left frozen for a sibling. I'm not going to lie, it cost A LOT but it was worth it :)
We also made the decision after I became pregnant to buy 3 more straws from our donor. These straws are being stored at the European Sperm Bank, so technically if we decided not to use those straws, we could 'return' them to the sperm bank and get some of the money back, and those straws would become available for someone else. You can only 'give back' straws to the European Sperm Bank if they stay on their premises - as soon as you transport the straws to your clinic, you cannot return the straws. I'm glad we made this decision to buy more straws when we did, as I have not seen any more straws become available for our donor since then. Keep this in mind if you use the European Sperm Bank that your donor may stop donating / there is no guarantee there will be more straws available in the future. So if using the same donor is important to you, you may want to purchase more straws initially. The European Sperm Bank does prioritise giving straws to families that have a child from that donor already when a sperm donor is coming towards the end of donating, and I know that there are families on a waiting list for our donor if anyone (like us for example) were to give back any straws.
We're now trying for a sibling with our remaining embryos (I'm carrying again). As we now have a child, we are not eligible for any NHS treatment (keep this in mind if you might want a sibling, that you would have to completely fund any attempt for a sibling yourselves - it doesn't matter who is trying to conceive if you are both the legal parent of your first child you wont be eligible for NHS treatment to conceive a second child). My partner does not want to carry, and is happy for any sibling to genetically come from me, but if she had wanted we could legally transfer our remaining embryos into her body, or use the same donor (using the extra straws we have) with her.
In terms of waiting times, its a bit hard to say. We finished all our initial consultations and fertility checks just before the first covid lockdown, during which the clinic closed. When the clinic reopened there was a bit of a backlog, but it only took a couple of months (during which time we chose a donor, got the sperm shipped to the clinic) until we could start IUI. We had to wait maybe 2 months or so when we moved from IUI to IVF.
This time around when we approached the clinic to ask about doing a FET we were basically told there wasn't a waiting list and we could get started whenever we wanted after we'd filled in all the forms etc, so we had a consultation, redid some paperwork / provided some additional paperwork they needed like my more recent smear test, retesting my tsh levels, having a scan to check there were no anatomical issues/changes since we had last been seen and things, redid consents and then got started again this month. I think there would have been more of a wait if we were doing an egg collection round.
Hope this helps, but happy to try to answer any more questions you have. Best of luck whatever you choose to do :)