the big night

I checked my fertility monitor yesterday and it was the first day of HIGH fertility, knowing that we would have about 3-5 days of high fertility. We decided to hold off until today just to give our donor, friend, and ourselves enough time to prepare for the big event.
The plan is they will come over, we'll have dinner, then he will go off to our guest room and create a sample. When he's done, he'll call our friend to bring the sample from his room to our room and then they will both leave. We will allow the sperm about ten minutes to liquefy. While we are waiting we will use the applicator to put the Zestica lubricant in. We will syringe up as much of the sperm as we can and insert it, then we will insert the softcup to keep it all in place. This is the plan at least.... :)

How we found our known donor

 Gay-ography.

That's how I'd describe it.  You put the request out into the universe via your gay friends and allies and you hope for the best. We told a friend that we were looking and she told a friend and then the magic happened. Other options of course are the internet, sperm banks etc.

We met our donor through a close friend in September with the intention of beginning this process in early february. We met at least once a month and had our very own "Come Dine With Me" dinner parties and developed a great friendship and had lots of open conversations, as one might imagine. This is what worked the best for us based on what we wanted out of our donor relationship.

Why we wanted a known donor

For starters, we live in the UK. Since 2005, every child conceived through a clinic has the right to find out the identity of their biological parent when they turn 18. We've reads a gazillion articles online, watched various documentaries (and a few hollywood movies) and all of those only reconfirmed that we wanted our child to know it's biological donor/parent from the beginning. We will absolutely be the parents, but we don't want to have to wait until age 18 for them to meet. We don't want him to be a mystery, or built up into something he isn't. We want him to be known by our child from the beginning as the donor who made everything possible. That's what WE want. Everyone is different and the most important thing is that you do what is best for you in your family.

We are fortunate in the UK that same sex civil partners who have a child are both listed as the parents on the birth certificate. While this is amazing, since we're doing a home insemination, we wanted extra protection for ourselves and our donor so we searched online and found a donor/recipient contract to make sure we all had clearly established expectations and intentions. I'll attach a copy of it in my next post in case anyone can benefit from it.

Home insemination! Why we chose it...

It's simple really- it's much cheaper to do home insemination that it is to go to a clinic. But it's not the only reason we chose it. 

My partner is a British National, I'm American. If anyone knows how fortunate I am to live in England, it's me. Not only is our relationship recognized, but in Hertfordshire county we're entitled to up to three free IVF treatments courtesy of the NHS. If it's free, why arent' we doing it? Well, we've done a lot of research, which is really hard to come by, and decided we prefer trying to conceive with fresh sperm instead of frozen sperm. We attended several seminars and talked to various women's clinics and all of the statistics they had were for couples with fertility issues who are trying to conceive. No one seems to have accurate statistics for women who don't have any fertility issues who are conceiving with donor sperm. Fresh sperm results in live birth nearly 40% of the time, whereas frozen sperm resulted in live birth 18% of the time- for couples with fertility issues. So we decided that since I don't have any fertility concerns, fresh sperm would probably be even better and have a higher percentage of success than frozen sperm. 

Aside from that, I prefer the idea of conceiving at home with my partner, instead of in a clinic with strangers. There are obvious precautions to take with a home insemination and known donors, like testing for STI's. There is a test available called the NAT, Nucleic Acid Test, that can give rapid results for HIV1, HIV2, Hep, etc. This test is hard to come by from your general practioner, but can be done through a private clinic for around £300. The main reason they freeze the sperm is to quarantine it and double check for STI's. If you get the NAT test, you don't need to quarantine the sperm. If you decide home insemination isn't for you, but you still want fresh sperm, this is something to consider. 

In a nutshell, that's why we chose to do it at home...