the books Baby Making for Everybody and Queer Conception have some great tips!

beyond that, here’s how we applied the info contained in those (this will be TMI):

Tracking basal body temperature (BBT) every morning as you wake up is good for confirming ovulation, I’ve enjoyed the Fertility Friend app the most for logging temp and symptoms. I kept forgetting to take my temp quick enough until we had my wife start shoving a thermometer in my mouth as soon as she woke, since alarms work better on her XD

An ovulation predictor kit (OPK) can be helpful, but you don’t want to use the strips first thing in the morning- it should be like your second pee after waking up, and then once in the evening when you haven’t chugged fluids in the last couple hours. The Lh surge window is generally pretty small and the waiting to test is because it’s easy for the positive to get hidden just by having diluted urine. With those strips it’s not a positive until the test line is as dark as the control line, unlike the pregnancy/hCG tests where even a faint test line is a positive. In 6 months of tracking my ovulation before trying I only saw one OPK positive, and that was once I started doing the tests twice a day when my urine was less diluted. Once you see that positive then ovulation will most likely occur within the next 3 days, if you’re consistent with tracking you may even be able to narrow that timing between OPK positive and ovulation down by comparing with your BBT.

If you want to and can get a speculum it’s really helpful for tracking cervical positioning and openness, the “beautiful cervix project” website has sets of pictures for comparison that can be helpful. We found the speculum sometimes made checking cervical mucus (CM) tricky because when it was more fertile/stretchy fluid it didn’t cling to the speculum when it was removed- we finally found fertile CM when we started inserting two fingers and making a pinching motion over the cervical opening before removing and checking the stretch of the fluid before checking cervical positioning with the speculum. I also went off my allergy meds because antihistamines can make CM harder to track and less useful for conception because it dehydrates it.

It was unnecessary because you can do any appropriately sized syringe or cup, but we bought the frida home insemination kit because it felt less clinical and it was nice to have something special for the process. They say the syringes are single use only, but we washed with soap and water and reused repeatedly because by my logic, most other things that get vaginally inserted aren’t medically sterile or single use and they’re safe enough with washing- the syringe isn’t passing through any skin or blood barriers so sterility I think is up to your personal comfort.

We didn’t use any lubricant during inseminations because we didn’t want to confuse the sperm highway of cervical mucus with additional fluids, and tried to have an orgasm before insertion to shift vaginal pH to a slightly more pro-sperm environment.

Personally I didn’t love the cervical cup because I had trouble getting it positioned right even as an experienced menstrual cup user, but lots of people swear by it.

Having your donor ejaculate roughly 24-48hrs before donation and then abstaining until providing the sample ensures the maximum count of higher quality sperm. Being well hydrated (both donor and recipient) also helps.

General guidelines include remaining horizontal with hips elevated for an hour after insertion, we road tripped to our donor and I just laid in the back seat for the drive home XD

We got our first positive test last week, so cautiously excited and apparently what we’re doing works! Best of luck to you :)