Why (and How) I'm Using the Home Method
submitted by Kenzie
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 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.
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.
You need a sense of humour and fun to make this sort of thing work.
