Fertility journeys are rarely easy and always personal. I share mine here in the hopes that it may help other couples, LGBTQ or not, with an understanding of the process. We learned a lot through our experience and I’m here to share those lessons now.

No matter your fertility journey, you are never alone.

My wife and I knew that we wanted kids and planned to start trying to get pregnant just a few months after the wedding. But what does “trying” entail for a same-sex couple?

Well, for me it all started years earlier. When I came off the birth control pill in my early 20s, my hormones and fertility were all out of whack. It was QUITE a process to get my body in a place of balance so that I could conceive a baby. You can read more about that journey here.

let’s get some FAQ out of the way

How did you choose the donor?

The sperm bank provides a catalogue (yes, a legit catalogue!) of potential donors that you can go through. Once you find donors you are interested in, you can request a more in-depth profile.

We were looking for:

Physical characteristics that matched my wife, so that our baby would still resemble both of us in some way
Physical health*- diet, lifestyle, genetics
Mental + emotional health- career, motivation for donating, etc

*As a Nutrition Consultant, I was well aware of how diet and lifestyle impact sperm health and YOU BETTER BELIEVE I was picky when it came to choosing a donor 😉

how did you decide which one of you carried the baby?

This is different for every same-sex couple. In our case, I always knew that I wanted to birth a baby, while my wife was happy to just be a mom. I also spent years optimizing my health + hormones and my body was more prepared for conceiving + carrying a baby.

did you do ivf?

Nope! IVF, or In Vitro Fertilization, is a complicated set of procedures where the egg is fertilized outside the body and then implanted into the uterus. This is often necessary when one or both partners have fertility challenges and cannot conceive naturally. Since I had healed my hormones, I had no reason to believe that I had any fertility issues, so we chose an at-home insemination process instead!

what? you can do that at home?

Heck yeah. Turns out you can buy anything on the internet, including sperm. We chose our donor through a specific sperm bank (located in a different state), then had to get a doctor’s signature on an Authorization Form to allow us to do an at-home insemination. It felt important to us to start our family in as intimate and non-clinical process as was possible.

how much did it cost?

When we added it all up, the entire process cost about $4,000. It took us 3 months of actively trying before we were successful, and we tried 2-3 times each month (more on that below). It would have cost more, of course, if we had needed longer than 3 months to get pregnant. This is another clear example of how many layers privilege has. A heterosexual couple may have more privilege than a same-sex couple, but we had the means to save and invest in our family this way, while many same-sex couples do not. All methods of starting a family as a same-sex couple are outrageously expensive. Just wanted ya to know.

the process

If you’re a same-sex couple considering conceiving at home, here is how it worked for us…

The sperm was delivered in a nitrogen tank to keep it frozen. Once shipped, we had 7 days to use it or lose it. Since we had been tracking my cycle (SO important), I knew approximately when I was going to ovulate and when the sperm should arrive- we aimed for 3-4 days before my projected ovulation. Now here is where it gets tricky! Fresh sperm can survive in the body for 5 days, so as long as you are around the time of ovulation, the little guys have a shot. However, frozen sperm only lives in the body for about 24 hours. That means we needed to use the sperm no more than 24 hours before the actual moment of ovulation (the egg drop). To make things more complicated, once ovulation happened, the egg only had about 12 hours to meet a mate before the window closed! That means we had to get pretty exact about WHEN I was going to ovulate…which can be exceptionally hard to determine!

There are lots of ways to track ovulation, but we found daily ovulation test strips to be really helpful (side note: I think these are a great idea for anyone struggling to conceive. Often we just aren’t ovulating exactly when we think we are!) When we started seeing a dark line on the strip (measuring LH, the ovulation hormone) we knew it was time.

The ovulation tests can generally indicate that you will ovulate within about a 36 hour window. For a couple using fresh sperm, that’s plenty accurate enough! But since the frozen stuff only lives for 24 hours, that was still too wide a window. That’s why we generally used 2-3 samples each month, about 12 hours apart from each other, to cover our bases.

Now if you’re imagining a turkey baster situation…you’re not far off. The sperm bank sent us a kit with slightly more sophisticated equipment to use, but you get the general idea.

And then the hardest part…we wait! After the first 2 months were unsuccessful, I reviewed the data I collected from my cycles and realized that my luteal phase was quite short (about 6 days). If your luteal phase (the second half of your cycle) is too short, your body doesn’t have enough progesterone or time to get the egg implanted! I spent the next month focusing on targeted foods + herbs to boost progesterone…and the rest is history! Turns out that is what my body needed to help the pregnancy stick.

lessons for all couples trying to conceive

Know your cycle- inside + out. An irregular or “lopsided” cycle (where one phase is significantly longer or shorter than the other) can indicate specific hormone imbalances and make it very difficult to conceive. I recommend tracking your cycle always, but especially in the 6 months before you want to start trying. It’s also so helpful to understand exactly what is happening and when throughout the month.
Track your ovulation. If you and your partner are more go-with-the-flow, that’s great. But if you want this to be successful NOW, or have been trying for a while and want more data, this is an inexpensive place to start. Finding out that you are ovulating on day 23 of your cycle instead of day 14 can make all the difference in the world!
Do the pre-work. Don’t wait until you want a baby to start preparing for it. I strongly believe that taking the time beforehand to heal my hormones, optimize my diet, and consider fertility supports made for a much smoother journey than it would have been otherwise.
Get holistic health support. Before jumping straight to expensive fertility treatments, explore the possibility of working with a nutrition consultant or a naturopathic doctor who can optimize your diet, lifestyle, and hormones. SO MANY fertility issues we are seeing these days are a direct result of diet + lifestyle factors that we can control!

if you are struggling with fertility i encourage you to schedule a free 1:1 consult with me. together we can work at the root of the issue before committing to expensive fertility treatments ♥

What was your conception journey like? What other questions do you have?? Comment below!

Conceiving as a Same-Sex Couple [4 Lessons We Learned]