‘Fertility-Friendly’ Lubricants are Frustrating Fertility

This is my first piece on Medium. I’ve decided to write it because in my experience as an artificial insemination sperm donor, I’ve become frustrated with claims that certain lubricants will help a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant, when it’s actually far better to use nothing at all.

To date I have helped conceive over 40 pregnancies through at-home artificial insemination. Many of the women I’ve helped had later on told me that they had been using a so-called ‘fertility-friendly’ lubricant to supposedly increase their chances for the first few cycles, which had been unsuccessful. They eventually stopped using the lubricant and succeeded at getting pregnant. I’ve never heard the reverse from any woman I’ve helped, where someone started to use it after being unsuccessful, and then conceived. I know such stories might be out there, but that’s probably just because it’s a big world and coincidentally the woman may have had a better-positioned or healthier egg when she first started using a lubricant. My experiences are not extracted from the enormous pool of every woman who has tried these products, but just the dozens of women that I have helped conceive. In my experience, it reduces the chances.

These lubricants do not actually do anything to help sperm or increase the chances, but the manufacturers are using clever language to try to make women think this.

They do in fact know better though and if you read their words critically, you will see that they can’t really say that it increases the chances of getting pregnant because that would be blatant fraud. They have been clever though to mislead people nonetheless.

Here’s an example: At this website for one of these products, called “conceive plus”, this is the FAQ

If we look at “Why is it a good idea to use this lubricant when [trying to conceive]?” they say this:

If you read that carefully, nowhere does it really suggest that this lubricant will improve your chances of conceiving, compared to using nothing.

“Developed by doctors” means nothing. A doctor could invent a new recipe for peanut butter if they want and say it was ‘developed by doctors’.

“Cleared by the US FDA for use by couples trying to conceive” just means that it was approved to be used as a lubricant and won’t cause illness for the user. This does not suggest it will increase your chances of getting pregnant.

Then they “contrast” it to other lubricants. This is important, because that’s really what this product is, it’s just a lubricant that is hopefully less harmful than other lubricants.

The other main product is called “Pre-Seed.” They too use the clever “fertility-friendly” lingo. This is an artful and subjective term, not a scientific one. It can mean whatever they want it to mean, and they feel justified using this artful term simply because their product is less-harmful to sperm than KY’s popular brand of sexual lubricant.

Let’s look at the marketing language they actually use:

The operative words here are “relieve friction,” “enhance the comfort,” “lubricate vaginal tissue to facilitate entry.” Those are the uses. They can get away with saying “designed for use by couples trying to conceive” because they designed it to be a less harmful lubricant for conceive than common sexual lubricant’s like KY’s brand.

These products are lubricants (not fertility boosters). They are just less harmful than other lubricants, such as the KY brand of sexual lubricant.

There’s a reason why they can’t say that studies have shown their products to increase the chances of getting pregnant: the reverse is true.

A university study of various lubricants showed the best results for mustard oil, of all things, and concluded “Pre-Seed showed a slight (∼4%) but significant drop in progressive motility after 30 minutes.”

This comes down to more than motility though. Lubricants just amount to a barrier for the sperm. Sperm do not need a liquid to swim through because they already come with their own seminal fluid which makes up over 99% of semen. To conceive, it’s ideal for the semen to make contact with the cervix, without the adulteration of a manufactured lubricant that does nothing to help them.

Trying to conceive can be mercilessly frustrating in some cases. It’s a happenstance of fertilization between an egg that measures at one one-hundredth of a centimeter, and a sperm cell that is far tinier than that. It’s so distant from us in scale that it’s as if it were taking place in another universe. It can make us feel helpless and desperate to increase our chances.
It’s a shame that businesses have preyed on that desperation to sell a product that only makes it more frustrating.