Every year, thousands of people in the USA use donor IUI to attempt pregnancy.
When is donor IUI necessary? What is the best way to get pregnant using Donor IUI? Stay tuned
Hi. I’m Dr Randy Morris. I am a board certified reproductive endocrinologist - what
most people call a fertility doctor. On today’s episode of InfertilityTV,
I am going to discuss the best way to become pregnant using donor IUI.
Why might somebody need to do Donor IUI? There are several reasons. The most common
is If someone does not have a partner with sperm. This includes a single person, same sex couples,
and opposite sex couples in which the male partner does not produce sperm. Donor IUI might also be
used in opposite sex couples who are both carriers for genetic disease that they don’t to pass on
or the sperm provider has a genetic disease that they dont want to pass on.
Where do you get donor sperm? Most of the time, people use sperm which came from a sperm bank.
A sperm bank is an organization that has recruited sperm donors to provide multiple semen specimens
which are then frozen and stored for later use. In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration oversees
all kinds of donations including sperm donation. Before a person can donate sperm, they must
complete an extensive medical history and undergo testing for infectious diseases. They will then
collect and freeze the semen specimens. The sperm must remain frozen for at least 6 months after
which the donor must repeat all of the infectious disease testing. By using this quarantine period,
you can be sure that the donor did not have the infectious diseases when the sperm was donated.
It is also possible to have a friend or relative donate sperm for IUI.
The sperm donors must also complete the same infectious disease testing as anonymous donor.
With some types of infections, like hepatitis or AIDS, the FDA does not allow sperm donation.
There are some infections, like herpes, that are not tested, and there is one infection,
a virus called CMV which is tested but even if the result is positive, the FDA still allows donation.
If you are searching a sperm bank website, you will see these donations listed as CMV positive.
Should the person who is attempting to become pregnant, complete any testing? At the very least,
people who are going to have a donor IUI should be tested for CMV themselves. People that are
CMV negative should try to find a sperm donor that is also CMV negative. Fertility testing is
probably not necessary unless there is a history of difficulty becoming pregnant naturally.
One question that I get asked alot is how many frozen sperm specimens to purchase.
This can get expensive. My recommendation is that if finding your ideal sperm donor was difficult or
your ideal donor does not have very many specimens available, you may want to
purchase more of them to prevent the sperm bank from running out of your top choice.
Performing donor IUI is done pretty much the same way that IUI using your partner’s sperm
is performed. The main difference is, of course, that the sperm must be thawed first. The key to
becoming pregnant with donor IUI is timing the IUI to be on the day of ovulation. This can be timed
using a home ovulation test or by monitoring in the doctor's office with blood tests and
ultrasounds. The sperm is loaded into a syringe with a catheter attached. The catheter tip is
placed into the uterus and the sperm is squirted inside the uterus. Its a quick and easy procedure.
How long does it take to get pregnant with donor IUI? Just like opposite sex couples
who attempt pregnancy with intercourse, only a small percentage of people become pregnant
each month. With frozen donor sperm, that percentage is a little lower than it is with
fresh sperm. Older people also have lower pregnancy rates compared to younger people.
This study looked at people who attempted pregnancy using donor IUI. As you can see,
each month more and more people became pregnant. In people under the age of 35, about half of them
had gotten pregnant by their third try. In 35 to 40 year olds, it took about 7-8 months for
half the people to have become pregnant and in those over 40, it took about 9 to 10 months.
Fertility doctors will commonly use medications like Clomid or injections like Follistim to help
speed up the time it takes to become pregnant in people with infertility. What about people
without fertility problems doing donor IUI? Will fertility medications help speed up the time it
takes to become pregnant? This same study also looked at this question. Here we see how long
it took people to become pregnant naturally, without fertility medications. Using injections
we see that people became pregnant at almost exactly the same rate. Using clomid actually
caused people to take longer to get pregnant. The bottom line here is that if you dont have
any other infertility issues and just need some sperm, fertility medications do not help