Patients are always asking me, when should we have intercourse? Patients will often tell me what they read on infertility blogs – that they should wait 3-4 days before producing semen for intrauterine insemination.
What do we know: we know that abstinence (no ejaculation) for greater than 4 days produces an increase in the sperm count but a reduction in the percent of the sperm that is motile.
Everyone’s situation is different so let your doctor counsel you about what is best for you but I advise couples to have their last intercourse the night of their hcg shot (also known as the trigger shot or shot that induces ovulation). A recent study by researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina, showed that the higher pregnancy rate was seen in those who had intercourse within 2 days of their IUI. They compared pregnancy rates with those who had intercourse more than 2 days before the IUI.
Read more about this study here:
http://www.fertstert.org/article/S0015-0282(09)02462-5/abstract
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