How Can We Increase Our Chances of Conception?

What’s the right number of times for at-home insemination per cycle? My wife and I are going to try next month with donor sperm, and I’m wondering if we can increase our odds of conceiving.

—Doing the Donor Math

When you’re doing at-home insemination, it’s understandable to wonder if doing more than one insemination per cycle improves your chances of conception.

We don’t have much data on at-home inseminations, let alone doing multiple per cycle. We do have some data on double intrauterine insemination, showing that doing multiple IUIs with donor sperm does not statistically improve chances of pregnancy when compared with single IUI.

Data for heterosexual couples (which we can use as a good comparison) suggests that the timing of intercourse is more important than the quantity of attempts. In this meta-analysis, researchers compared the probability of live birth for people having untimed heterosexual intercourse versus timed heterosexual intercourse with urinary ovulation predictor tests. They found that the timing of intercourse probably raised pregnancy rates from 16% to 18% in the untimed groups to 20% to 28%.

I generally do not recommend that people doing insemination at home with previously frozen donor sperm try more than once in a cycle. There’s no evidence that it works, and donor sperm is expensive.

If you are using fresh sperm from a partner or known donor who lives close by, you absolutely can do multiple inseminations in a single cycle if you so choose — but make sure to prioritize a well-timed insemination over multiple.