Genesis Fertility Clinic Blog
July 5, 2010Home inseminations
Two patients in one day is not a pattern. It might just be a fluke, but it does make me wonder. Today two of my patients had a positive pregnancy test who had been trying to conceive with a known donor at home for at least a year. Single women, women whose husband’s have poor or no sperm, and lesbians will sometimes use sperm from men the know, at home, to conceive. We call the men “known donors.”
It’s not a recommended practice as known donors used at home are not screened like unknown/anonymous sperm donors are for infectious diseases, drug use and genetic conditions. So, it can be risky. It can also be harder to conceive. The semen is ejaculated by the known donor, put into a cup or syringe and then inserted into the vagina. It might cool down (cooling damages sperm), be placed too low in the vagina or be of poor quality such that conception is unlikely.
I don’t have a sense of how many women are using known donors for home insemination. Not many come to the clinic with a donor they want to use because the screening of the donor is complicated and involves a 6 month quarantine of their sperm at a lab in Toronto before inseminations can begin. For some women this “hassle” serves as a barrier and instead they just try home vaginal inseminations.
When women have been using a known donor for a while and haven’t conceived and then conceive the first time they use anonymous donor sperm at the clinic it does make me wonder about the technique they were using at home and/or the quality of the donor’s sperm.
The good news is two more women learned they were pregnant today. They might have learned they were pregnant a year or more sooner if they had a different donor or different technique to try and conceive.
Live and learn. Thoughts for the day!
Dr. Beth Taylor, MD, FRCSC
Reproductive Endocrinology & Infertility
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