At home vs. at the doctor's office

The most recent discussion/debate/investigation we've been doing is to whether we should inseminate at home or at the doctor's office.  Depending on who you talk to and what you read the opinions are varied.  My initial instinct was definitely to go with the the doctor's office. My thinking behind this was they are the trained medical professional and I have no idea what I'm doing.  However, after talking to a lot of lesbian parents and stumbling around the lesbian TTC (trying to conceive) community, there are a lot of great arguments and some research that point to at home insemination.  I've heard and read a lot of stories about multiple unsuccessful insemination attempts at the doctor's office, followed by a successful pregnancy with just one try at home.  Jennie and I have been going back and forth for weeks on what we thought was right for our family.  Ultimately, it made more sense for us to start the process at home for many reasons. The first being it is the least expensive means of trying and eliminates all of the doctor's office fees and doing it this way will stretch out our fundraised dollars and make them last even longer. Secondly, at home in our room and in our bed is a much more relaxed environment when it comes to baby making. Who wants to conceive their child on a cold plastic/paper covered exam table with some stranger all up in your business? Not us!

The next question in this process was what type of at home insemination should we attempt? Should we order washed or unwashed sperm, should we attempt IUI or ICI? So many questions, so of course we turned to our lesbian friends on the internet to see what's out there and what's working for them.  We decided based on cost and the type of sperm available at our local sperm bank (keep an eye out for an upcoming blog post on the sperm procurement process--talk about some awkward conversations!) that we would attempt at home IUI. I've read quite a bit about the pros and cons and the debates as to whether at home IUI's are advisable and we've decided it's the right thing for us. So once we made this decision I went online to order our supplies. We had to order some speculums and catheter tubes. With IUI we will be placing the washed sperm (have to make sure you use washed sperm for IUI) into the uterus directly. There is a higher likelihood of a pregnancy when you by pass and go straight to the uterus. In order to place the sperm in the uterus you have to attach a thin catheter tube to the end of the oral syringe.  Sorry if this is too much detail!  The process can be somewhat complicated because you have to get the catheter tube through the opening of the cervix and into the uterus, but I've been reading up on tutorials and tips from other lesbians online. I hope this goes better than the time I decided to learn to cut hair from the internet--sorry Dani!

I'm sure at home insemination will be slightly awkward, but we're making the best of it! We keep joking that we need to make a baby making playlist for the iPod and I've already warned Jennie that I'm going to have to have the laptop propped up next to me so that I can follow the instructions :)  But hey, if a little Baby Crate comes out 9 months later, who cares how awkward it was!