hiya pollyanna - i'm an IUI veteran so will give you my take on the whole thing - our clinic refuses to do ovulation induction with timed intercourse - they believe the chances of it working are just not good enough.

so, you've already done the ovulation induction thing with FSH - you know what that's about. not sure how your clinic were doing (i'm with a satellite clinic of monash) - but basically we had 7 days of stims, u/s to check follies - trigger when it was approriate - and then the actual IUI

for the IUI, we toddled off to the clinic with DH's sample (we lived within a certain time frame of the clinic so he could produce his sample at home - which took the clinical side of it away from his perpective seeing i was "involved" in making it fun for him). sample was "cleaned", and then it was inserted into my uterus in a process similar to a pap smear - though less uncomfortable. DH was there the whole time, and the clinic nurse was talking to both of us the whole time to make it relaxed. i was able to lay there for a short time, and then go about my normal day's activities. we'd usually go out for lunch and a bit of window shopping, then home for the afternoon.

for the abstinance thing - we were told for hubby not to ejaculate for 2 to five days before the sample was collected - we usually went from the morning of the u/s to the morning of the IUI as it was basically 48 hours. wasn't a drama as i had trigger in there and was usually niggly from ovulation and just didn't want to anyway! after the IUI, we were told to have sex within 12-24 hours to make sure that there was another sample there in case ovulation is later than they anticipated...

hope that helps - feel free to ask any more questions you might have...

good luck
BG