Why (and How) I'm Using the Home Method
Choice Chat
Even before I made the choice to conceive with a known donor, I knew that however I conceived I would be doing it myself with as little medical intervention as possible. After all, it's my body, my fertility, and in the end I'm creating my family. It feels very important to me to take responsibility for and to understand the process, as well as the result.
I also knew that I very much preferred to have a known donor. Not just an anonymous person my child could meet at 18, but someone I knew and loved as a friend, and someone I respected as a person.
When I initially approached my friend of nine years about being a donor, he was surprised but pleased. At 46 years old and gay, he had never expected to have the opportunity. I've known him long enough and well enough to know that he is a principled and compassionate person, intelligent, educated, and engaged in the world. He is relatively healthy and active. I knew he would be very careful with my sexual health, as he is with his own. I trust him.
We both went away to think about things and write letters to each other and do research on our own. After six months of talking and thinking and negotiating, we signed a Donor Insemination Agreement that we drew up ourselves, got an STD screen and decided to begin. That decision clinched the home insemination method. Both his age and his sexual orientation make it nearly impossible to go through a fertility clinic here in Canada. Health Canada's regulations preclude donor insemination with donors over the age of 40 or who are homosexual. [Editor's note: Some women in the U.S. also run into barriers, depending on what clinic they use, even if they want to use frozen, tested sperm from a gay friend, thanks to some odd FDA guidelines.] I felt confident going ahead on my own.
It was both awkward and amusing to decide how we would arrange "deliveries." I suggested that I pick up from him at his home whenever convenient, but he suggested that we do it at work (we work together). So that is how we have done it, twice per cycle, except for a couple of times when weekend timing was more appropriate.
Once I tell him that the time is right, he finds time during the day to do his part, and then brings the container (in a paper bag) to my office.
Inseminating in the office bathroom was not exactly what I had in mind. It is perhaps not the most romantic solution, but it has been practical, most of the time.
How it works
When I started down the Choice Motherhood path, I looked online for the best method of at-home insemination. Most methods are definitely easier with an extra set of hands. Few seem designed with independence in mind. As far as I could tell, the simplest and most practical method for doing it alone involves using an Instead menstrual cup. This is the method I chose to use.
I put the sperm in the Instead cup and then insert the cup. Afterwards I feel to make sure the cup is right over the cervix. Because my cervix is high and open, I have actually given myself a shoulder cramp trying to reach it. Female anatomy can be a little inconvenient sometimes.
To my mind, this method has advantages over using a speculum and a syringe, which would be impractical at work anyway.
The main advantage of the Instead cup is that it holds the semen in close contact to the cervical opening. Technically there's not even a need to lie down, although for the last few months I have. My feeling is, it can't hurt.
Doing inseminations in this way is easy and quick, unless I'm having a clumsy day. During one early and memorable insemination, I almost lost my grip on the Instead cup as I was inserting it and ended up with the cup half-inserted and a puddle of sperm in the palm of my hand. What a mess! I despaired of getting pregnant from that one.
I'd been using fertility awareness as part of my contraceptive practices for about four years, so I thought I was familiar with the ins and outs of my fertility. I hadn't, however, realized how much easier it was to avoid my fertile times than it would be to exactly pinpoint them.
On our second month of trying, I ended up having to go to my friend for sperm four times. Every time I thought I was on the cusp of ovulating (according to cervical fluid signs), it would turn out that I wasn't (still hadn't ovulated two days later according to basal body temperatures). He was a good sport about it, but I felt a little silly asking him again and again.
My cycle is relatively regular (31-35 days), with a 13-day luteal phase, and I actually have lots of fertile (eggwhite) cervical fluid, sometimes lasting for four or five days before I ovulate. Since the third month I have used ovulation predictor tests and they helped to narrow down the time frame significantly.
You need a sense of humour and fun to make this sort of thing work. Even though my friend is extremely supportive, it still has sometimes felt awkward between us. After all, essentially I have my friend masturbating on command. Certainly not a situation either of us ever expected to be in!
And it hasn't always been easy. During month four I had a chemical pregnancy (a positive pregnancy test and a little nausea, but a regular period and no other signs). Trying to conceive is an emotional rollercoaster, and the downs come at such inconvenient times.
After six months of trying - and living my life in two-week increments of hope and disappointment - it's too easy to feel discouraged. I try to take extra good care of myself, seek out quality time with friends, get a massage, sit in the sunshine, but it can still be hard.
Still, even though I'm not yet pregnant, I continue to know that I would like my pregnancy to be mine from start to finish. I don't regret my choice of donor; he's been an incredible friend throughout. I don't regret my choice to do home insemination; after all, it almost worked once. I only get to start this life once, which is a pretty incredible and sacred thing, so I'll just keep trying, and be patient.
