How to Get Pregnant: A Step by Step Guide for Lesbians
When you’re a same-sex couple who is ready to have a baby, it’s hard to no where to start. Read our step by step guide for how to get pregnant as a lesbian.
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When my wife and I decided we were ready to start a family, we had no clue where to start. It’s a whole different ball game figuring out how to get pregnant as a lesbian couple. But we were determined to have a baby (baby fever is a very real thing!), and we knew there were tons of queer families who came before us, so we did what any sensible same-sex couple would do when they want to learn how to conceive a baby as a lesbian couple - we googled it. The results were overwhelming and sounded so complicated! Who knew there were so many ways to get pregnant as an LGBTQ couple? The mix-and-match options are practically endless, and can make your head spin, for sure. And, ugh, the cost to conceive a baby as an LGBTQ person range from sort of pricey to outrageous (all options cost money, unfortunately). But you know what? We wanted a baby, so we did it. I got pregnant in September 2019, and we welcomed our baby in May 2020 (more on having a baby during the beginning of the pandemic in another blog post). There are lots of ways to start a family as a lesbian couple (or a trans couple, or a bisexual couple, or as a non-binary couple, or as queer couple, or as a single parent by choice), and I am so excited to share the steps we took to start our two mom life. If you are ready to have a baby and start your own queer family, read on.
1.Find a Sperm Donor
When you are a lesbian couple, the first thing you need to do to start a family is figure out how to find a sperm donor. You can find a sperm donor through a sperm bank, such as California Cryobank, through online sperm donor match websites like Known Donor Registry or the app, Just a Baby, and social media groups, such as the private Facebook group, U.S. Sperm Donation (yep, you can find a sperm donor on Facebook), or you can ask a friend or family member to donate sperm to you. There are so many options, and it is for you and your partner to decide which type of sperm donation option is the best fit for you and your growing family. Do you want a known sperm donor (someone who is either a friend, family member, or a donor you will meet in person), an anonymous sperm donor (a donor through a sperm bank who does not ever want to be contacted) or an open sperm donor (a donor through a sperm bank who is open to being contacted by the child once they turn 18 years old.
After weighing all of the options, my wife and I decided to go through a sperm bank because we weren’t thrilled with the idea of hiring a lawyer and dealing with the legal fees involved with a sperm donor match situation (you’ll need to have a contract to terminate a sperm donor’s parental rights if you are getting sperm from a known donor), and we weren’t totally comfortable with having a friend or family member in our lives who was the “donor dad”. I will be the first to say that all options have pros and cons, but so do most (if not all) things in life, right? For us, we liked that a sperm bank took care of the legal aspects of terminating the donor’s parental rights, and also the medical aspects of the genetic testing done with the donor by the sperm bank. We also liked that we could easily choose from a variety of vetted sperm donors to pick the best match for us. When it comes down to it, you have to figure out what feels right and is most important for you family. I get into more detail about how to decide on a sperm donor here.
2. Pick Your Conception Method - ICI, IUI, IVF, or RIVF
Depending on your choice for how to acquire sperm, you will have up to four options when it comes to deciding how you want to conceive a baby an an LGBTQ couple. Here are the difference between ICI, IUI, IVF, and RIVF. Please keep in mind I am not a doctor or in the medical field. All costs and percentages are based on public data available, and may vary in your particular situation.
ICI. If you choose to get pregnant in the privacy of your own home without the help of a midwife or medical professional, your choice is simple - ICI, which stands for intracervical insemination, which can be done with an insemination kit like Mosie Baby and unwashed sperm (aka, the turkey baster method) with just you and your partner (and, well, the sperm). It can also be done in-home with the help of a midwife, or at a fertility clinic for the cost of roughly $200 to $350 per try. Sperm is injected with the syringe at or near the cervix, which is right outside the uterus. This method is as close to the old fashioned way as a lesbian couple is going to get, especially if you’re going to go the DIY method at home without the help of a professional. So if you want a super lowkey experience that also happens to be the cheapest option of the four, and comes with the same chances of getting pregnant as a heterosexual couple trying to conceive the traditional way, which is anywhere from 5% to 30% chance of getting pregnant each cycle, depending on the intended pregnant person’s age, reproductive health, and the sperm count, with a 37.9% success rate after 6 cycles - meaning if you keep trying for 6 monthly cycles, your cumulative odds of getting pregnant by the 6th cycle is 37.9% - this may be the best option for you. Keep in mind you will still need a contract to legally protect your parental rights, and I would highly recommend seeking a lawyer with experience in LGBTQ sperm donor conceived pregnancies, hence saying “cheapest” but not free.
IUI. IUI, which stands for intrauterine insemination, is the next option you should consider when choosing the best way to get pregnant. Sperm is injected directly into the uterus at or just before ovulation, which helps give the sperm a head start by bypassing the cervix and being placed close to the egg, which increases the odds that the sperm and egg will connect. IUI is by no means inexpensive, ranging from several hundred dollars to about $2400 per try, depending on the clinic and what your insurance covers (which could range from zero coverage to full coverage), and not including the cost of fertility medications (should you need them) or sperm, but it’s less expensive and less invasive than the next couple of options. While IUIs can be performed at home, they should only be performed by a medical professional or midwife, so typically, an IUI is performed at a fertility clinic, hence the bigger price tag. Like ICI, the chances of getting pregnant by IUI varies depending on the age of the person wanting to get pregnant, their reproductive health, and the sperm count. A person under the age of 35 has a success rate of 15% to 20% per cycle, a person between the ages of 35 to 40 years old has about a 10% chance per cycle, and a person over 40 year old has about a 5% chance per cycle. Another interesting and important thing to keep in mind is that no matter your age, repeating the IUI process over and over actually increases your chances of a successful pregnancy. That being said, a whopping 90% to 95% of successful IUI pregnancy occur within 3 to 4 attempts (I got pregnant on my fourth IUI attempt)! So if you like the idea of being guided by medical professionals whose literal job is to help people get pregnant, but are looking for a method that isn’t super invasive, IUI may be your best place to start.
IVF. IVF stands for in vitro fertilization, and is much more complex than ICI or IUI. IVF is exclusively performed by medical professionals at a fertility clinic, and the process for one attempt takes several weeks or longer and are always done with fertility medication and injections. Eggs are removed from the person who is trying to conceive and fertilized with sperm in a lab. After 3 to 5 days, the fertilized egg (or embryo) is placed back into the person’s uterus (meaning the person is pregnant immediately), with the hope for the embryo to stick and continuing to grow for the next 9 months. IVF is the most effective way to get pregnant by far. A person under the age of 35 has a 56% chance of getting pregnant during their first IVF cycle, a person aged 35 to 37 has a 41% chance of getting pregnant during their first IVF cycle, a person aged 38 to 40 has a 26% success rate on their first IVF cycle, and a person over 40 years old has a 9% first attempt success rate with IVF. So no matter what your age, your chances are much higher with the choice of IVF. But the price per IVF cycle is exponentially more expensive than ICI or IUI, ranging between $8,000 and $30,000 depending on the clinic and the specific treatments you’ll need. IVF is great to consider if you want the best chances of getting pregnant quickly, if you have gone through at least 4 IUIs without success, or if you are on the older end of the spectrum.
RIVF. RIVF stands for reciprocal in vitro fertilization, and is specifically for lesbian couples or couples who both have female reproductive parts. Reciprocal IVF is the same process as IVF, except the eggs are removed from one person, fertilized with sperm in a lab, and then placed into their partner’s uterus. In other words, the non-birthing partner is biologically related to the fetus, while the parent who is carrying/birthing the baby is non-genetically related to the baby. It’s a great option if both female partners (or those with female reproductive organs) feel strongly that they want to have a big role in conception process because it’s literally as close as a lesbian couple can get to conceiving a child together; it’s one partner’s egg and the other partner’s womb (plus, you know, some donated sperm). It’s also an amazing option for a transgender man to have a biological child, should that be desired. Because it’s essentially the same as IVF with one really cool twist, the cost is higher, which is to be expected since both partners will need medication and medical treatment, and can range anywhere from a few thousand dollars more to about $10,000 more per attempt, depending on the clinic. One good thing in terms of cost is that if you have multiple healthy embryos from the first cycle and need another cycle, you can skip the first few steps and use the healthy, frozen embryo during the next attempt, thus cutting down costs, so with RIVF, cost varies from cycle to cycle, even within the same fertility clinic. The other good thing - studies show that most couples going through RIVF will conceive. Why? Most likely it is because couples choosing RIVF are not necessarily have infertility issues - they just lack easy access to sperm. In other words, studies for IVF are centered around heterosexual couples who are experiencing infertility, and are thus seeking medical help to conceive. With RIVF, if you and your partner are under 35 years old and have general good reproductive health, your odds of conceiving are high, with an estimated success rate of about 43%. Over 35 years of age and it’s still really good odds for conceiving a baby - 35% success for a person age 35 to 37, a 27% success rate for a person age 38 to 40, and up to a whopping 18% for a person over 40 years old.
3. Pick a Fertility Clinic
You’ve chosen the sperm donor (or at least have a list narrowed down - it’s totally fine to have a handful of sperm donors in mind at this point. Yes, I realize I wrote, ‘handful of sperm.’ Yes, I am laughing, too.), and you’ve chosen a method of insemination. Now it’s time to find a fertility clinic. Now, your “fertility clinic” may simply be your own bedroom - you don’t have to go through a doctor to have a baby if that sounds super clinical and unromantic to you. If you want to do it at home, but would like the help of a professional, you can reach out to a midwife to help with in-home ICIs or IUIs (more about the difference types of procedures later in this post). Since I was pushing 35 years old and am a gold star lesbian (meaning I’ve never had sex with a person with a penis), I had absolutely no frame of reference for how fertile (or not) I was. And since sperm from a sperm bank isn’t cheap (ours was roughly $1,000 per vial, and you typically use one to two vials per try/month), we decided our best bet was to have a fertility doctor help us conceive a baby in a fertility clinic. This turned out to be the right choice for us, since my ovulation was all over the place, I had polyps that needed to be removed from my uterus, and it was quickly apparent that I would need the help of fertility drugs to seal the conception deal (I’ll get into more details about the types of fertility drugs I took in another blog post). For this part, we checked our health insurance to find fertility doctors and fertility clinics that were in network and in a reasonable distance from our home in Los Angeles, California. Thankfully, we found an amazing fertility doctor and fertility clinic that happened to be a few miles from where we lived.
Here’s a tip my wife and I did not know when we were trying to conceive our first baby. When we called to make an appointment with the fertility doctor, we already had chosen a sperm donor from California Cryobank. What we didn’t know and what we learned at our first fertility doctor appointment was that our clinic only worked with two sperm banks - one happened to be California Cryobank, thank goodness (and they are the absolute best to work with)! The reason is because, unfortunately, there are a lot of sperm banks out there that are not reputable. I know. That was another thing we learned when we were trying to get pregnant. There are a very small number of sperm banks that are widely recommended (California Cryobank, Fairfax Cryobank, and Seattle Sperm Bank are all very reputable sperm banks) It’s really important to go through a reputable sperm bank if you’re going to acquire sperm that way, so go ahead and call your chosen fertility clinic ahead of time to ask if they work with specific sperm banks.
4. Trust the Process
If you are to this point in the process, take a moment to pat yourself on the back. I mean, look how far you’ve come? If you’re anything like I was at the beginning of my conception journey, you went from being overwhelmed and feeling like you’d never understand all the steps to start the actual conception part of the conception journey, but here you are! You are ready for the egg and sperm to meet and make your baby (or babies)! That is no small feat. And just when you feel like you’ve jumped over every hurdle it takes to make a baby as a same-sex couple, you realize…it’s just the beginning! Yeah, I know. It can feel like a marathon because, well, it kind of is. But just as you’ve trusted the process so far - found a sperm donor, picked your conception method, and picked where to make your baby - I’m asking you to keep trusting the process. There are a lot of steps to having a baby for LGBTQ people, and there aren’t really any shortcuts at this point in science. So just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Take each ovulation stick, each appointment, each blood draw, each trigger shot, each insemination, and each two week wait (tww) as it comes. Remember to breathe. Remember to have lives outside of trying to conceive. Go on dates. Hang out with your friends. Leave the house in under 30 seconds on a whim. Enjoy what will hopefully be the end of the chapter in your life before kids (because once you’re a parent, you’ll wish you went on those last few dates and friend hangouts sans babies, and oh my, will you miss being able to leave the house quickly/whenever you feel the urge! lol). There will be highs, there will be lows, and while some of you will be lucky enough to get pregnant on the first try (and if you do, I am SO incredibly happy for you!) for others, it may take many tries.
Trust the process.
It may take several methods.
Trust the process.
What you thought your journey would look like may turn out to be totally different.
Say it with me.
Trust the process.
If you want to have a baby as a lesbian couple, a gay couple, a transgender couple, a bisexual couple, a non-binary couple, or a mixture of any kind of couple (or on your own, or a poly couple, or anyone who is a good person who wants a child!) we’re rooting for you. We’re excited for you. We’re sending you all the baby dust in the universe.
Love,
Avery & Jessica
This Two Mom Life
Jessica (left) and Avery (right) one week before their first baby was born.
