Are you planning to/did you use an Instead Cup for your sway?

[Hobbermittens]

I have practiced using the Instead Cup to collect CM, and I find it uncomfortable and not very easy to use. How important is it in a boy sway? Is it possible that it can push the sperm away from the cervix if it isn't put in right?

[atomic sagebrush]

Honestly, I wouldn't use it! I think, anything that messes too much with Mother Nature has the potential to kill sperm - I haven't seen any data about whether the material in them is sperm-safe or not. Plus, all the messing around, it just seems like it has potential to backfire, if it's put in wrong or if you spill half of it...jsut not worth it to me.

[Hobbermittens]

Honestly, I wouldn't use it! I think, anything that messes too much with Mother Nature has the potential to kill sperm - I haven't seen any data about whether the material in them is sperm-safe or not. Plus, all the messing around, it just seems like it has potential to backfire, if it's put in wrong or if you spill half of it...jsut not worth it to me.

That's kind of my thought too. I just keep reading in sways that it was used to keep sperm up at the cervix. But can't I do that by propping my hips?

[Zivic-Bubac]

Is it possible that it can push the sperm away from the cervix if it isn't put in right? I'm wondering the same thing. If you are using it for natural sway, not TBM.

[daisyfay311]

I have practiced using the Instead Cup to collect CM, and I find it uncomfortable and not very easy to use. How important is it in a boy sway? Is it possible that it can push the sperm away from the cervix if it isn't put in right?

I agree--I'm not going to use it because I find it painful and hard to use. I plan to prop my hips...stand on my head if I have to, but I'm not wild about inserting anything that nature didn't intend to be inserted.

[Hobbermittens]

I'm wondering the same thing. If you are using it for natural sway, not TBM.

No TBM for me. Just natural sway. But lots of ladies have used them for a natural sway, just after intercourse.

[babydes56]

I tried to use it but couldnt, i'll be propping my hips

[Zivic-Bubac]

No TBM for me. Just natural sway. But lots of ladies have used them for a natural sway, just after intercourse.

Yes, I know and I was wondering the same thing, if it's not put in right, could it actually push the sperm away? I'm never sure is it on the right place.

[Kris217]

I used them in my last attempt, they aren't very comfortable like they claim to be! Plus when i removed it a few hours later it had practically turned sideways somehow. I won't be using them again this try.
I'm doing it a little differently than you are, a home insemination. I left the syringe in last time for about 30 mins and not one drop came back out which i thought was great.

[Hobbermittens]

Yes, I know and I was wondering the same thing, if it's not put in right, could it actually push the sperm away? I'm never sure is it on the right place.

Yeah, it seems like it could do more damage than good, if you use it wrong. I just worry about leaving out a part of the sway that has brought so many others success, you know? I kind of feel like I should do everything I can!! But I would hate it if that one thing screwed everything else up, and since I can't seem to use it right, I think I will skip it, rather than risk it.

[Hobbermittens]

I used them in my last attempt, they aren't very comfortable like they claim to be! Plus when i removed it a few hours later it had practically turned sideways somehow. I won't be using them again this try.
I'm doing it a little differently than you are, a home insemination. I left the syringe in last time for about 30 mins and not one drop came back out which i thought was great.

That is great!

[Zivic-Bubac]

Just one last thought: it says in the IC instructions to put IC in while sitting on the tolile bcos then vagina is horizontal. If I do that right after dtd, that would be jump and dump so no way, and I'm not willing to risk putting it wrong when I'm lying.
So maybe to lay down with propped hips for like 2 hours or so and after that to go to the bathroom and put in IC?

Would it make any difference regarding sperm count around the cervix?

[atomic sagebrush]

I used them in my last attempt, they aren't very comfortable like they claim to be! Plus when i removed it a few hours later it had practically turned sideways somehow. I won't be using them again this try.
I'm doing it a little differently than you are, a home insemination. I left the syringe in last time for about 30 mins and not one drop came back out which i thought was great.

I'm sure they are "comfortable" like contact lenses are "comfortable"! :p

If it's an artificial insemination and you like using the IC to up your odds of pg by all means carry on, I just think that the wrangling it in and out to check pH every 30 minutes IG-style is only going to harm blue swayers because they're going to lose a lot of spermies that way.

[LolaInLove]

I used an IC for the first 3 months I swayed (obviously bfns) and then gave up on it. I would try to put it in while propped up, which was ridiculously hard, and then I wondered the same thing: am I somehow hindering the sperm with this thing? Plus, not to tmi you all out, but I felt like I was digging for China trying to get that thing out. I did NOT like the removal at all.

[Kris217]

It says the fit right in behind the pubic bone and you can't feel it, but that wasn't the case for me. It kinda sat on my bone and i could definitely feel it! It also says you can make love with it in and your partner won't feel it.....umm i doubt it!!

[LolaInLove]

It says the fit right in behind the pubic bone and you can't feel it, but that wasn't the case for me. It kinda sat on my bone and i could definitely feel it! It also says you can make love with it in and your partner won't feel it.....umm i doubt it!!

Yea, we tried this and he could definitely feel it.

[hope.ful]

Did anyone have spotting after using it?? We were wanting to dtd tonight and I'm spotting after trying to use it to collect CM (I don't have much until after I O)

[LolaInLove]

Did anyone have spotting after using it?? We were wanting to dtd tonight and I'm spotting after trying to use it to collect CM (I don't have much until after I O)

Maybe it is irritating your cervix....I would ditch it.

[atomic sagebrush]

Did anyone have spotting after using it?? We were wanting to dtd tonight and I'm spotting after trying to use it to collect CM (I don't have much until after I O)

I answered this on your other thread but it's way more easy to irritate/scratch your cervix around O because it's so open and soft and I think you prob. injured yourself a little bit.

[Flava]

I'm sure they are "comfortable" like contact lenses are "comfortable"! :p

If it's an artificial insemination and you like using the IC to up your odds of pg by all means carry on, I just think that the wrangling it in and out to check pH every 30 minutes IG-style is only going to harm blue swayers because they're going to lose a lot of spermies that way.

I used it and got a bfp but I was doing msu so no worry about sitting up. But to take it out every 30 min.? WTH? I never did that. And for what? We used bsf and ew so the ph must be high in there for a long time no need to check it. That's crazy!

[atomic sagebrush]

I used it and got a bfp but I was doing msu so no worry about sitting up. But to take it out every 30 min.? WTH? I never did that. And for what? We used bsf and ew so the ph must be high in there for a long time no need to check it. That's crazy!

That may be more for pink swayers than blue, but they're supposed to take the cup out every 30 minutes to check pH, add whatever chemistry to raise or lower pH and then put it back in again.

[Flava]

That may be more for pink swayers than blue, but they're supposed to take the cup out every 30 minutes to check pH, add whatever chemistry to raise or lower pH and then put it back in again.

oh ok lol then Im happy I didn't sway pink because it would make me crazy!

[Kris217]

I was thinking......I pee a lot so I was wondering if I laid still with my hips up for as long as possible would it be a good idea to put the instead cup in before I go pee? The sperm will only come out when I pee so I was wondering if the cup would maybe help hold them in longer?

[TTC5]

I'm not using one will lay with my hips propped for a few hours then go to sleep!

[Kris217]

I wish I could just go to sleep but I'm up every 2 hours during the night. I just think it's going to come out anyway so using one may not help but it can't hurt???
I don't know, I'm thinking of sooo many things right now. Kinda freaking out cos I really want this time to be the one. I am on IG site now and reading about timing. Do you think I should wait til I get my first +opk then head to Sydney or should I try the day before that then the next 2 days?

[TTC5]

How many days do you get full on +'s?

[Kris217]

I wanna kick myself cos I haven't really checked that, I always marked off in my calendar the day of +opk. But last time I tried I did get another + the next day so maybe 2 days??

[Tink18]

Ok maybe I am not understanding how to collect CM, I thought i did after reading some of the threads. Can someone give me a little helpful advice? Thanks! I think I actually have my sway pretty much all figured out except the whole CM thing gets me. I'm going to be tracking my ovulation for the next few months until we TTC in Sept!

[TTC5]

Tink - I insert a clean finger (my middle "rude" finger) and kind of bend my finger tip when inside to scoop up some CM, alot of the time it comes out with just a bit of moisture but closer to O I can get more!!

Some ladies use these instead cups but I don't know how they work?

[Kris217]

The instead cup does catch it mostly around it's rim, that's what I found anyway but yeah your finger should work just fine as long as you have a decent tester if you're checking your PH.

[Hobbermittens]

I use the Instead Cup to collect CM. I leave it in there for a while so I get a good amount to test, and then I use the Hanna to test pH. I stick the end of the Hanna right into the Instead Cup. It is easy to get a reading that way.

[Flava]

kris if you need to get up every 2 hours I would put in that IC when the first time you wake up to go pee. So DTD put hips up or how ever you do it and go sleep. You wake up and put the IC in and then get up to go. So this way you have the cup in all night and you can go anytime. If you get 2 days +opk I would do it the first night. Some girls are talking about to DTD 2 or 3 days before O and then again on O. But if Im not sure when do I O how can i know that now it's 2-3 days before , right?

[Kris217]

kris if you need to get up every 2 hours I would put in that IC when the first time you wake up to go pee. So DTD put hips up or how ever you do it and go sleep. You wake up and put the IC in and then get up to go. So this way you have the cup in all night and you can go anytime. If you get 2 days +opk I would do it the first night. Some girls are talking about to DTD 2 or 3 days before O and then again on O. But if Im not sure when do I O how can i know that now it's 2-3 days before , right?

Ok that sounds good, I'm not sure on the time of day I'll be doing it cos it depends on my donors schedule....It may not be night so I can just go to sleep. If it's day then I will limit my drinks during the day and lay there as long as possible before i get up. Then yeah put the IC in and leave it for a few hours.
It is hard to predict 2 to 3 days before O, unless you're like clock work every single month. So DTD O day and the following day seems like the best thing to do.

[Flava]

kris don't DTD after O day because after O is ttc girl. If you use opk's or ovulation monitor I guess you can figure out when is O comes and you can do it 2 days before.

[Kris217]

Oh right, so 2 days before? Bugger I thought that was in the girl zone too.....I think I've read too many different things!
Hmm now I don't know what to do, I thought day of O and the next day would cover me in the boy zone but if I missed that i'd still have a chance at getting pregnant even if it's with a girl?
So maybe I should do it the day before, day of and day after???

Thanks Flava

[Hobbermittens]

Kris! Don't do it the day after O because you could end up doing O+12 which is girl!!! I keep hearing 12-24 hrs before O is best.

[Kris217]

Ahhh well i'm glad i found this out before hand!! Seeing i'm taking Clomid it gives me a false positive for a few days so now i'm going to have to figure out what is real and what is fake then judge when 12 to 24 hours before ovulation is!!
Thanks so much ladies!

[atomic sagebrush]

I was thinking......I pee a lot so I was wondering if I laid still with my hips up for as long as possible would it be a good idea to put the instead cup in before I go pee? The sperm will only come out when I pee so I was wondering if the cup would maybe help hold them in longer?

By the time 20 minutes has gone by (and probably even sooner), the sperm has mostly left to go hang out in the cervical crypts anyway. You can get up right away, pee, go dancing, and even sit in a hot tub afterwards and still get pregnant.

What comes out after you DTD is mostly the semen, yes, there are prob. still some sperm but there are 80 million of the little guys and most of them have already gone into the CM by the time 5 minutes have passed, let alone 20 mintues!!

[atomic sagebrush]

I wish I could just go to sleep but I'm up every 2 hours during the night. I just think it's going to come out anyway so using one may not help but it can't hurt???
I don't know, I'm thinking of sooo many things right now. Kinda freaking out cos I really want this time to be the one. I am on IG site now and reading about timing. Do you think I should wait til I get my first +opk then head to Sydney or should I try the day before that then the next 2 days?

Getting up every 2 hours to pee is NOT going to keep you from getting pregnant. I really really think you'll lose more sperm from trying to wrangle a Diva into position than just laying still for 20 minutes or so and then going about your day.

I think you should be in Sydney when you GET your +OPK. and then try for three days in a row.

[atomic sagebrush]

Tink - I insert a clean finger (my middle "rude" finger) and kind of bend my finger tip when inside to scoop up some CM, alot of the time it comes out with just a bit of moisture but closer to O I can get more!!

Some ladies use these instead cups but I don't know how they work?

Just be sure you're not actually digging INTO your cervix, I know they recommend this on other sites but I don't think it's a great idea. Too much risk of injury/infection. There should be some CM around the cervix that you can grab.

[atomic sagebrush]

Oh right, so 2 days before? Bugger I thought that was in the girl zone too.....I think I've read too many different things!
Hmm now I don't know what to do, I thought day of O and the next day would cover me in the boy zone but if I missed that i'd still have a chance at getting pregnant even if it's with a girl?
So maybe I should do it the day before, day of and day after???

Thanks Flava

Very very few pregnancies take place the day after O. It's pretty much worthless and I hate to see you waste your effort, plus it's considered "girl timing" although it hasn't been studied too much.

I think we talked about this before ages ago but if timing is super important to you, if at all possible, I would try for night before O-morning of O-night of O (but I rem. your donor was not down with this schedule.) Otherwise I would go for 2 DBO, 1DBO, as early in the day of O as possible.

I would not waste any time/effort on the day after O. The egg will either have been fertilized or be dead by that point.

[atomic sagebrush]

Ok that sounds good, I'm not sure on the time of day I'll be doing it cos it depends on my donors schedule....It may not be night so I can just go to sleep. If it's day then I will limit my drinks during the day and lay there as long as possible before i get up. Then yeah put the IC in and leave it for a few hours.
It is hard to predict 2 to 3 days before O, unless you're like clock work every single month. So DTD O day and the following day seems like the best thing to do.

The absolute longest an egg can live is 24 hours and that is under optimum conditions. Studies have even been done and the vast, vast majority of pregnancies (BOTH boys and girls) are from sperm present in the reproductive tract prior to O.

[Kris217]

Very very few pregnancies take place the day after O. It's pretty much worthless and I hate to see you waste your effort, plus it's considered "girl timing" although it hasn't been studied too much.

I think we talked about this before ages ago but if timing is super important to you, if at all possible, I would try for night before O-morning of O-night of O (but I rem. your donor was not down with this schedule.) Otherwise I would go for 2 DBO, 1DBO, as early in the day of O as possible.

I would not waste any time/effort on the day after O. The egg will either have been fertilized or be dead by that point.

Thanks so much Atomic, well I'm no longer using that donor....he was so much trouble! I have found a new guy who is great and might be willing to do the day before, morning of and night of O. I will ask him, i just thought i'd do the day after in case i was one of those women who ovulate 2 days after a +opk. But yeah i will ask my donor and hopefully he'll agree to the plan :)

[TTC5]

Even if you do O 2 days after, for a boy sway you are better to dtd a day or two earlier anyway aren't you as the sperm can stay alive in the cervical crypts?

[Kris217]

Even if you do O 2 days after, for a boy sway you are better to dtd a day or two earlier anyway aren't you as the sperm can stay alive in the cervical crypts?

Oh yeah that's true, well FX he'll go along with the new plan!

[TTC5]

I hope he does! You and your partner are a beautiful couple and so deserve a baby - EACH :)

[Kris217]

I hope he does! You and your partner are a beautiful couple and so deserve a baby - EACH :)

Thanks so much!!

[atomic sagebrush]

Even if you do O 2 days after, for a boy sway you are better to dtd a day or two earlier anyway aren't you as the sperm can stay alive in the cervical crypts?

Exactly. That is how most of us actually get pg - millions of sperm stay alive in the cervical crypts waiting and then the second the egg pops out, they "hear" or "smell" it and start after it. The whole female reproductive tract is designed around keeping the maximum amount of sperm alive as long as possible because your body wants to get pregnant.

[atomic sagebrush]

I hope he does! You and your partner are a beautiful couple and so deserve a baby - EACH :)

I totally agree!!

[Kris217]

Thanks Atomic :)

[TTC5]

Exactly. That is how most of us actually get pg - millions of sperm stay alive in the cervical crypts waiting and then the second the egg pops out, they "hear" or "smell" it and start after it. The whole female reproductive tract is designed around keeping the maximum amount of sperm alive as long as possible because your body wants to get pregnant.

Do you think this is where shettles was wrong? He claimed the boy sperm, after ejaculation swam fast to the egg, if there was no egg they died and the slow swimming girls got to the egg first.

But does it actually go more like, some sperms swim super fast to the egg, no egg they die. While others lay dormant in the crypts waiting for the egg to release, when it does the sperm all wake up.. and off they go again.

I often wondered why some people claimed you could get a boy 2dbo, when shettles had me believing that if there was no egg you were destined for a girl!

[atomic sagebrush]

Do you think this is where shettles was wrong? He claimed the boy sperm, after ejaculation swam fast to the egg, if there was no egg they died and the slow swimming girls got to the egg first.

But does it actually go more like, some sperms swim super fast to the egg, no egg they die. While others lay dormant in the crypts waiting for the egg to release, when it does the sperm all wake up.. and off they go again.

I often wondered why some people claimed you could get a boy 2dbo, when shettles had me believing that if there was no egg you were destined for a girl!

Well, Shettles was wrong in his fundamental premise and so as a consequence, all his ideas he based upon that premise were incorrect.

Shettles looked under a microscope and saw some sperm with pointy heads and some with round heads and decided that the pointy heads MUST be Y and the round heads MUST be X. But what he really saw was capacitated and uncapacitated sperm.

Based on this faulty assumption he then decided that since Y were smaller, they swam faster and were shorter-lived and weaker, and X must therefore be slower and stronger and more resilient to damage. He came up with the timing suggestions and then revived an old idea about pH that a veterinarian had come up with, to include vinegar or baking soda douches.

So a WHOLE lot of everything we "know" about swaying is based on one very very huge mistake. Subsequent research has proved that X and Y sperm are very similar in size and swim the same speed and live the same amount of time. Tons of studies have been done on timing and none of them ever seemed to find the same result. Shettles was an extremely talented man and highly accomplished, so people tend to give his theory so much more credence than it deserves, but at the end of the day it was an error in research that has since been disproved.

That having been said, through sheer serendipity, Shettles may have stumbled onto something that really DOES sway pink (abstinence vs. 2-4 days BD). Also, it may be that timing matters a bit in some other way - like, if you DTD before you have EWCM, it may reduce sperm numbers and also sway pink, whereas if you DTD at O when you have a lot of EWCM it may help maximize sperm numbers and potentially sway blue that way, so it makes his theory seem a lot more plausible because people HAVE succeeded using it and it works to a certain extent.

But it's not due to any mystical properties of a certain day and if we can reinact the same circumstances nearer to O (for pink) or improve the EWCM at O (for blue) then we will increase our odds of success and getting pregnant. Same with pH - if low pH kills sperm and less sperm sways pink, then low pH does sway pink but not because of any difference between X and Y sperm. High pH may help more sperm to survive and sway blue but that doesn't mean that you should therefore try to raise your pH to abnormally high levels because you may end up killing sperm that way, as well.

Plus, if you're one of those people who has a lot of EWCM prior to O, you may NEED to control that EWCM if you want to sway pink and if you don't, timing won't work for you. And if you're swaying blue and have very little EWCM or your DH has low sperm count/quality, you may DTD smack dab on O and still conceive girls.

As with everything, the devil in in the details!!!

[ttcboy2011]

:bigsmile:oh my gosh Lola!! I am laughing so hard when I read, " I felt like I was digging for China trying to get that thing out"
Thank you so much for the laugh!