How to Track Your Fertility When Using Donor Sperm

Tracking your fertility is an important part of the pregnancy journey. For heterosexual couples, tracking ovulation is often used to time sexual intercourse. However, fertility tracking is also often an essential part of the journey for people conceiving with donor sperm.

When I started trying to get pregnant, I was not a fan of tracking my ovulation. Even though I’d been professionally supporting people who were trying to get pregnant for years and was a supposed expert in queer family building, I felt like a total beginner when it came to my own body, full of anxieties and doubts and obstinately resistant to keeping track of the data on my hormonal changes.

If this sounds familiar, you aren’t alone. It’s a lot to keep track of, especially for queer folks and solo parents. Our populations can face internal barriers to fertility tracking because so much of the information out there is geared toward heterosexual, coupled people with access to sperm. But getting a sense of your fertile signs, how to identify your ovulation window, and how long sperm lives inside your body will help you optimize each attempt — and hopefully save you some money and emotional energy in the process.

Let’s go over some of the most common questions:

What is the ovulation window?
How do you know when you’re ovulating?
When should insemination happen in your ovulation window?
How do you time insemination for fresh vs. frozen sperm?

Take me to the bottom line

What is the ovulation window?

When tracking your fertility, the goal is to identify the signs of your ovulation window, meaning when your ovary releases an egg into one of your fallopian tubes. Eggs live inside the body for 12 to 24 hours, so it’s important to understand the signs your body offers leading up to your ovary releasing an egg. As a starting point, you need to understand how your menstrual cycle in general gives clues about your ovulation window.

For most people with a uterus, the menstrual cycle lasts between 25 and 34 days. Ovulation generally occurs 14 days before menstruation begins, so we expect people with a 26-day cycle to ovulate around day 12. For people with a 33-day cycle, we expect ovulation on day 19 (hint: day 1 means the first day of your period).

Tracking your fertility and planning your inseminations with an irregular cycle can be a challenge. If your menstrual cycle varies by more than four days each month, I recommend consulting a fertility doctor.

How do you know when you’re ovulating?

Now let’s dive into strategies for homing in on your peak fertile window.

For many folks, keeping track of all the following methods is overwhelming and conducive to tracking burnout. I recommend trying each of them and choosing one or two favorites — along with an ovulation predictor kit (OPK) — to make this process sustainable and supportive of your mental health.

During this whole process, I recommend keeping track of what you notice about your body in a paper chart or the app of your choice. You can download a free tracking chart here.

Ovulation predictor kits

OPKs are test strips that analyze the amount of luteinizing hormone (LH) in your urine. As we near ovulation, the LH level in our body rises. When it reaches a peak level, it triggers the ovary to release an egg into the fallopian tubes.

For most people, ovulation happens about 24 hours after the peak LH surge, but it can vary between 6 and 48 hours (which is why it’s so important to understand your other fertile signs).

To use an OPK, pee into a cup twice a day (morning and evening), and submerge the strip according to the package instructions. I recommend beginning this process three to four days before you expect to ovulate. Keep track of your results and record them for future reference (pro tip: photos of the results are helpful!).

Cervical position and openness

The cervix is an amazing organ — it moves inside the body throughout the menstrual cycle and changes depending on the hormonal surges inside your body. When you are ovulating, your cervix is high, soft, and visibly open. (You can see photos of real cervixes at various stages of people’s cycles here, if you want to familiarize yourself.)

People either use their fingers to feel the location and consistency of their cervix throughout their cycle or visualize it with the use of a speculum (they’re easy to get online, and extremely useful for identifying ovulation patterns).

Cervical fluid

Cervical fluid changes its consistency leading up to ovulation, which aids in the process of sperm finding its way through the cervix and into the uterus — how cool is that? For most folks, cervical fluid is white and creamy in the days after menstruation, becoming progressively more plentiful, stretchy, and clear (like egg white) when ovulation occurs. After ovulation, it generally becomes sticky and cloudy or opaque.

You can keep track of your cervical fluid changes by dabbing with toilet paper when you use the bathroom or using (clean) fingers to reach inside your vagina and feel your cervical fluid.

Basal body temperature

Basal body temperature (BBT), your body’s temperature at complete rest, can be used to identify your ovulation window. On average, BBT goes from between 97° and 97.5℉ before ovulation to between 97.6° and 98.6° after ovulation. It can be a great way to find out when ovulation has occurred and identify the end of your fertile window.

When tracking your BBT, take your temperature first thing in the morning, before getting out of bed or drinking anything, using a basal body thermometer (they are easy to get online and not too expensive).

This method works well for people who have consistent sleep and wake schedules. If you travel frequently, get up at night often to care for another creature, or generally have trouble sleeping, BBT tracking probably isn’t ideal for you.

Some people love using wearable tracking technology such as the Oura ring or Tempdrop for keeping track of BBT and other fertile signs.

Other signs

Some people notice other signs when tracking their ovulation, such as mittelschmerz (ovulation-related cramping or pain), increased sex drive, or mood changes. Keep track of all your symptoms (making sure not to burn yourself out!). This can be an empowering opportunity to get more familiar with your body and prepare for pregnancy and parenting.

When should insemination happen in your ovulation window?

Using a combination of OPK strips and one or two other fertile signs, you’ll be able to identify your ovulation window. Once you get your positive OPK, identify:

When your cervix is the most open, high, and soft
When your cervical fluid is the most stretchy, plentiful, and clear
When your BBT rises
If/when you experience other ovulation symptoms

If you’re trying to conceive at home with a partner’s or donor sperm, homing in on your ovulation will help improve your chances of conception. If you’re going to a fertility clinic for insemination support, such as an IUI, your provider will help you identify your ovulation window and will likely also prescribe medications to increase ovulation hormones and optimize timing.

How do you time insemination for fresh vs. frozen sperm?

When planning your inseminations, the type of sperm you are using matters. If you’re using donor sperm to try to conceive, you can use either fresh sperm (from a directed donor) or previously frozen sperm from a bank (from either a directed donor or a nonidentified donor).

Fresh semen lives for longer than previously frozen sperm once it’s been defrosted (about 72 hours for fresh vs. about 18 hours for frozen). When using fresh semen to inseminate, you have more leeway than you do when using previously frozen sperm from a bank.

Here are my recommendations for timing inseminations, on average, when using fresh or frozen sperm.

Note: If your other peak fertility signs indicate that you are ovulating earlier than 24 hours after your positive OPK, always err on the earlier side of this window.

You may be wondering if it makes sense to do two inseminations per cycle with previously frozen sperm. The answer is: not necessarily, but it also depends on your budget. Statistically, doing two inseminations with frozen sperm does not drastically increase your chances of conception. However, if money isn’t a major concern, it’s never a bad idea to put more sperm in your body when trying to conceive. For folks doing two inseminations per cycle, on average, I recommend doing one insemination 12 hours after the positive OPK and another one 12 hours after that.

Closing thoughts

If you’re feeling daunted by all this information, take a breath. It’s common to feel overwhelmed when just learning how to track your fertility, especially when considering the high cost and challenging logistics of procuring donor sperm.

As with any new skill, this is one that requires practice, patience, and self-compassion. The more you keep track of your fertile signs, the more comfortable and confident you’ll feel timing your inseminations — and I hope that it will help you feel more connected to your body and fertility in empowering ways.

The bottom line

You generally ovulate 14 days before getting your period.
You can identify your ovulation window using an ovulation predictor kit in combination with other fertile signs (such as basal body temperature, cervical mucus, and others).
Time your inseminations to about 24 hours after a positive result on the ovulation predictor kit. If you’re going to a fertility clinic, your provider will help you with timing.
It’s not necessarily beneficial to do two inseminations per cycle with frozen sperm, but you can if you want to.

We recognize that readers of ParentData identify in different ways — read more about our approach to gender-inclusive language here.