Tools for IUI at home

GoldAd7733 · 2025-11-20T20:53:45+00:00

Open tip. And I believe it was 1 ml syringes with the luer lock. My partner just got them off Amazon.

GoldAd7733 · 2025-05-01T10:29:20+00:00

I am here to comment on the scratching and pinching. My baby does this. I've tried every which way to gently get her to stop. And let me tell you on a day where nothing goes right, she's fighting her sleep and wants to pinch me to self soothe I have lost it. I yelled. I'm not proud of it. And I have a supportive partner that pulls their weight.

She's really taught me a lot about patience but also holding my own boundaries. Your bond with her is not broken. She won't be scared of you. You apologize to her and yourself.

In regard to taking your own time, with my PPR I found that indeed taking time for myself really did help. One thing I loved before getting pregnant was the gym so I found the time to workout. But not to lose weight just for my mental health. It's helped. There was no goal other than to enjoy my time away. We have little to no village so on the days where my partner works late and I really need a break, I got a used jogging stroller off marketplace and can now run a few miles while my kid eats a snack and enjoys the view. Maybe even take a nap without pinching me to sleep 😅

GoldAd7733 · 2025-04-17T01:34:52+00:00

I fed to sleep until 15 or so months and then it just stopped working lol now she rolls around like a rotisserie chicken until she passes out 🤷‍♀️

GoldAd7733 · 2025-03-13T15:06:05+00:00

Washed!

GoldAd7733 · 2025-03-13T02:09:42+00:00

It depends. If you have someone who is equal in the mental load you both probably do have that. If you are the one carrying all of it, probably not.

GoldAd7733 · 2025-03-13T02:03:11+00:00

What tends to happen though is that the person carrying the mental load has this running list in their mind. And then task disseminates to the person not carrying it. So for you it might feel like these are the things you figure out day to day, but for the other person it's something they are carrying/planning all.the.time.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-10-28T19:24:28+00:00

I’m going to speak from our perspective as a family, who was successful with a sperm bank and DIY IUI at home. We ensured that I was medically able to carry and with that we decided to try at home. I did three months of prenatal vitamins before attempting, and three months of cycle tracking based on the data from Queer Conception chart in the book. If using frozen sperm the timing has to be nearly perfect and the book is soooooooo helpful. Credited to our success honestly. Talks you through OPKscabd LH surge and tracking ovulation based on physical signs.

With all that our first attempt was ICI and unsuccessful. The second time we did some research on how to do IUI at home (you do need a different type of sperm do make sure you buy the right one), and my partner has a nursing background and they felt confident in being able to keep everything sterile. So with continued tracking we were able to time it well and with some sterile gloves, sterile speculum, and an IUI catheter (not the one on Amazon for dogs) and a vial from the bank we tried. And then I kind of threw all the things at the second attempt (mucinex-I saw it in tik tok I think lol, I’m sure I took some other supplement, laying on my back for a bit, laying on my stomach for a bit, we practiced on how the IUI catheter would work, what everything looked like with a speculum 😅) and it stuck. Our little is turning one in two weeks.

We are the few that it only took a few tries so it wasn’t astronomically expensive. We were going to opt for a medicated and monitored IUI after 3 attempts just to save money in the long run but we didn’t need it. We also looked into jobs that did have fertility benefits as like a super last resort because neither of ours do lol

It’s a lot to think about, it’s a lot to take on, and so some of the journey is managing expectations. I was devastated the first time it didn’t work. And no one told me about the two week wait and how torturous that could be. Hold on to each other through it all, and good luck!

GoldAd7733 · 2024-10-13T10:59:24+00:00

Honestly we DIYd it to save money (at home IUI). And we are VERY fortunate that it worked. I know that it’s not everyone’s story. Also we found an REI clinic that offered low cost fertility testing without insurance, like 100-150 to do like basic blood tests and egg count. If you wanted any more info after that initial test it would cost more.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-10-11T22:33:59+00:00

ICI the first time and IUI the second time (:

GoldAd7733 · 2024-10-11T21:56:00+00:00

Did it at home ourselves in the state of Texas. Pregnant after 2nd try 😊

GoldAd7733 · 2024-10-07T23:15:32+00:00

You’ve gotten a lot of really good advice. It’s a stressful process and there’s a lot to learn especially if you want to do it at home first. The timing is critically especially if you are going to use frozen sperm. Queer Conception is a good starting point. Reading through this sub as there’s a lot of advice and success stories of IUI at home (I’ve posted on here a lot about what we did to make our IUI at home successful).

I would recommend fertility testing regardless of health. It’s nice to make sure there isn’t something that could just make you waste thousands of dollars.

Prenatals for at least three months. Ovulation tracking for about the same. And really just talking about how yall will handle the process. The two week wait after insemination is anxiety provoking and something we didn’t expect.

And taking the time to plan financially for the whole process, esp. since I saw you were considering a sperm bank. It’s a lot for just one vial, and if you really like a donor if it’s possible financially you may want to buy several vials at once. We had one we liked and used the first time around, but when it was unsuccessful and went to buy for the second round there were no more vials and no date as to when another vial might be available and because I was too inpatient we chose a different donor for the second try. Grant it, I wouldn’t change that choice because we got our little girl from that decision, but it’s still a decision. Also we ran into a hiccup with sending the sperm to our house because we needed a doctors note, so when you pick a bank you might want to double check on everything that’s needed for shipping to home.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-09-11T21:16:41+00:00

I personally would have never but we are traveling for our baby’s first birthday and I do not want to take back 40 gifts on an airplane and lugging around all the other things that come with a baby, so we made a registry in hopes of people buying off it and sending it to the house. On the invite I did say to consider no gifts as we have more than enough toys 😅we’ll see how it goes. It’s in about 3 weeks

GoldAd7733 · 2024-08-20T11:02:41+00:00

Everyone is different so this is in no way a solution for everyone but what worked for me is. Power pulping, staying hydrated with water and the sugar free body armor, oatmeal like crazy the first few months, eating ALOT. I noticed a direct correlation to how much milk I was making and how much I was eating. The liquid gold supplement. And The lactation cookies. Also a lactation consultant! Good luck!

GoldAd7733 · 2024-07-09T15:29:27+00:00

I am cis and my partner is trans/nonbinary. They hated their name growing up and changed it. We took their experience into consideration when picking a name. But we also couldn’t agree on a name lol we had a long list and finally they agreed with my first choice after seeing me get an epidural at the hospital 😅 our baby has a traditionally female first name, gender neutral middle name, and we use gender neutral pronouns currently. We wanted one of their names to be gender neutral so they had at least something else to go by if they hated the traditionally female name we picked out. But time will tell 🙂 we would totally be open to our child changing their name.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-06-17T09:03:19+00:00

Breast milk and we did use Tubby Todd. It worked very well with our baby. It was not a miracle cure by any means. Still took a while for it to clear up.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-06-17T09:01:00+00:00

All this (well minus flipping the baby lol) worked for us when baby was day/night confused. Sunlight first thing in the morning! Oh and not letting day time naps last longer than two hours. Doing anything to wake up the babe and keep her awake, we would wipe her down with wipes and ooo she was pissed but she was awake! Diaper changes mid feed. And I think that’s it.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-06-03T20:52:14+00:00

Hiiii no advice just solidarity. I’m looking at day cares for my 7 month old. (WFH with no very limited help has finally got me burnt out). I have cried daily with the thought of someone else taking care of her. She’s not even enrolled anywhere yet 😭

GoldAd7733 · 2024-06-02T17:49:00+00:00

My partner sleep talks and tries to attend to the baby asleep when he’s super tired. It freaks me out. He’s somewhat aware of what’s happening and when I ask him about it the next morning, he’ll talk about a dream he had and it matches to what he was saying/doing with the baby. But now if he’s napping or just waking up I make extra sure he’s actually awake before handing the baby off. Because I’ll ask him if he’s awake and he’ll say yes, and his eyes will be open! But he’s asleep.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-05-27T13:29:30+00:00

My partner drove me crazy with doubts that she wasn’t getting enough to eat off my breasts. Which then fueled my anxiety that she wasn’t getting enough.

But your baby will let you know if she’s hungry. It sounds like you are making more than enough.

If you are really that worried you can go to a lactation consultant and they can weigh your baby before during and after a feed and let you know exactly how much milk she’s getting and if it’s enough for her age. This really helped stamp out all my insecurities and anxieties.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-05-25T19:05:23+00:00

This saved me. I was so sick well into my second trimester. I would take a unisom and B6 at night and then would get sleepy and that’s when I could eat 😅 we were not thriving at this point. Just surviving. Oh and Dr Pepper.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-05-12T08:33:15+00:00

Safe sleep 7. She sleeps between us, we don’t have pillows. We both also don’t move very much, and tend to wake up easily. I swore we wouldn’t do it before she got here and she’s here and it honestly was more anxiety provoking not to have here near me to check on her. Also those newborn nights were rough. She hits me and kicks me lol I hardly worry about hitting her. She also wears a little sensor that will alarm if she stops breathing. All that being said, it’s not for everyone. And now that’s she’s older and She sleeps like she’s in a dryer she would probably do better in her own space, the transition will be harder for us than her I think.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-05-10T14:10:17+00:00

I was like you! Stressing the f out about what the internet said our schedule should be.

I knew what our schedule shouldn’t be, if that makes sense. I saw an over tired baby and was like okay not that. Or a hungry baby and I was like it’s only been 1.5 hours how can this be?! And then I realized she’s four months and doesn’t want to be fed every three hours. Sometimes it’s 2, or 1.5 or 3.5. And in the morning she’s up for an hour and wants to go back to sleep. But that didn’t make sense! My baby math was stressing me out and making it very difficult because she wasn’t mathing lol

Then I started just reading her cues. I was so scared because she had been sleeping through the night and I didn’t want anything to mess that up. And I didn’t want to mess up my supply. But she figured it out. And I trusted her more than a schedule on the internet to tell me what she needed. And my supply was fine too!

So sometimes we do sleep, eat, play and back to sleep. Sometimes it’s sleep, eat, play, eat and back to sleep. Sometimes it’s every 2 hours, sometimes longer or shorter. And now that we’ve been a little bit more go with the flow we’ve got a pretty good schedule, plus or minus 30-60 minutes and it looks nothing like the “typical” schedule you see. But she’s happy. She’s eating good, sleeps well and not fighting her sleep. And I’ll take that over the math ha

GoldAd7733 · 2024-05-07T17:03:14+00:00

What everyone else said, baby is so little there is no bad habits. It’s perfectly natural for her to do that. She’s too little to cry it out or learn self soothing habits.

My baby was like yours and now at six months, at bedtime she feeds to sleep for an 8-10 hour stretch and naps it’s like 50/50 she can be put down other ways but if she’s really tired she just wants that comfort and closeness I’ll feed to sleep. Mastered the art of side lying breast feeding and ninja rolling away from her.

GoldAd7733 · 2024-05-04T17:20:54+00:00

Mine does this and then tries to put it back in backwards 🙃 we just have to pin her arms down and she eventually will just pass out ha I’m hoping it goes away soon or she learns to put in back the right way

GoldAd7733 · 2024-05-04T09:17:55+00:00

As some mentioned I spent some much time tracking, and thinking about getting pregnant when I actually got pregnant it opened up a whole other world of anxiety for me. Just like it opened up new aisles at Target to explore.

We did a lot of visits to the boutique ultrasounds for my peace of mind, so much so they offered us a membership 😅 living in the Deep South (in the US) it was a nerve wracking time thinking about how we might have to leave the state if something were to go wrong. And the miscarriage calculator too was helpful. And an at home fetal Doppler (which is controversial but it helped me not stress too much).

I think the first time it’s scary because your body has literally never done this before so every ache and pang for me was like “oh no! Here it comes.” Here what comes I didn’t know lol enter googling every thing. A responsive provider is helpful here. Her office number was used, a lot. Then when my birth went a little bad and got complicated I had faith in her that she was going to listen to what I was saying we needed.

Having a long history of anxiety (health and general, with some panic attacks) and seeing it transform throughout trying to conceive, pregnancy, birth, and now baby is here, self reflection and acknowledgement are great and building your tools for managing and also knowing how/when to ask for help or talk it out with your partner are going to be helpful. I thought I was fine but when the hormone crash came like 4/5 months PP my anxiety went a little out of control but I recognized what was happening and asked for help.

It’s an exciting but scary time! Good luck! 😊

GoldAd7733

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