Artificial insemination is the process of inserting sperm into woman’s womb for fertilization without involving sexual intercourse.
Artificial insemination becomes popular, as the number of single mothers, gay and straight people want to get their own child.
There are many options available for artificial insemination like IVF etc (later in this article).
Apart from these, certain reproductive disorders, such as unconsummated marriage (UCM) related infertility can also be managed by artificial insemination.
UCM is a condition in which couples unable to attain penile-vaginal penetration after regular attempt for a certain period of time.
In such cases, females may have vaginismus and dyspareunia, whereas male partner may have erectile dysfunction and/or premature ejaculation.
In certain cases, a combination of these factors is also detected in infertility tests.
Advancement of medical science gives more than one options for artificial insemination.
Artificial insemination often requires fertility treatment to complete the desire of parenthood.
Following are the available options for artificial insemination.
In-vitro fertilization (IVF)
This is a clinical laboratory based procedure conducted in a Petri dish for fertilizing the eggs and sperm.
Therefore, the fertilization is completed without physical intercourse.
After fertilization, the product is implanted to the mother womb for development of the fetus.
The whole gestation period requires medical supervision and medical care.
Intrauterine insemination (IUI)
In this process, a small tube is inserted into the female uterus and extended up to the cervix for inseminating the sperm.
Medical professionals conduct this process in a specialized clinic.
Sperm can be collected from the intended father, donors or sperm bank.
If sperm is collected from the sperm bank, then the dead sperms and proteins require to remove through sperm wash process, otherwise, unwashed sperm can cause severe cramping after insemination.
Intracervical insemination (ICI)
ICI is also an artificial insemination and sperm inserted into the cervix of the female partner.
Anatomically, the cervix is the vessel present exterior to the uterus.
This can be done at a clinic or even at home.
Following are the steps require to pursue ICI.
- Calendar method requires to follow for monitoring the ovulation cycle.
- Routine ultrasound also conducted for confirmation.
- Regular monitoring of the mother’s body temperature also requires for successful completion of the method.
- Sometimes, a physician also prescribes drugs for stimulating ovulation and releasing multiple eggs.
- Sperm can be collected from partners or donors.
- A specialized syringe is used for inserting sperm into the vagina.
- An alternative option is placing the sperm in a cervical cap and then is inserted into the cervix and that need to keep for specific time duration.
- Women require to lie down for half an hour after completion of the insemination procedure. During this time span, sperm allows moving towards the uterus.
- After this resting period, women can join her regular activities.
- Woman require to conduct a pregnancy test almost after two weeks for confirmation of successful insemination process.
Intravaginal insemination (IVI)
An artificial insemination kit for IVI process contains a sterilized semen container, a flexible plastic IVI catheter, and a syringe (5 cc).
Collected semen is kept into the sterilized semen container.
The syringe is attached to the IVI catheter.
The guard is then fully dragged to the distal ending of the IVI catheter.
The IVI catheter is placed in the sperm container and the entire sperm sample is aspirated in the 5 cc syringe through negative suction.
Then the IVI catheter is inserted through the vaginal channel of the females partners and semen sample loaded syringe require to keep in the direction of 45° angle from the floor.
Slowly inject the semen inside the vagina and require to maintain the supine position in lie down posture for another 20 minutes after completion of the procedure.
Some clinic gives training to the couples and trained couples can do this insertion procedure by themselves at home.
Ravi Sharma is a self-motivated, successful entrepreneur and has a solid experience in the fertility segment. and he is the director at ARTbaby Global (ARThealthcare). He is a pharmacy graduate with post-graduation in business administration and has 14 years of rich experience in the field of infertility segment. He loves to write about IVF, Surrogacy, and other ART (assisted reproductive technology) news, issues, and updates. He is a Pharmacy graduate (B. Pharm) and M.B.A (marketing).
His most recent success includes the successful launch of the medical tourism company, ARTbaby, which offers treatment options for infertility, egg donation, and surrogacy. He likes spending time with his family and writing about various aspects of IVF surrogacy and donating eggs.