Morphology?

ctnj

TTC #2 for a year - I've been on Femara with timed intercourse since May (we used Femara 2 cyles to conceive #1).  I did one monitored cycle with Ovidrel, but the Ovidrel short-cycled me (period after 23 days).  DH had SA done and all numbers are fine but he has low morphology (2%). 

I followed my RE from a university center to new, private practice.  He's indicating in his experience, morphology isn't as important as motility/count, BUT that his lab folks (who came from other clinics) feel differently - that morphology is important.

We've not had an opportunity to talk with him at length yet but he did mention if we chose to do IVF, they'd also do ICSI due to the low morphology. 

Just curious how this may have affected anyone else's attempts at getting pregnant?  Obviously #1 wasn't that difficult for us once on Femara, I don't know that financially IVF is reasonable (I'd hate to blow through that much money that could ultimately be #1's college tuition, our savings in event of job loss, etc.).

Jen071407

My DH also had good SA results except 3.5% morph. Our RE also is not concerned, and explained that high count, etc cancels out the low morph. Our two DDs were each conceived on the second cycle of trying, so assuming his numbers were similar then, he shouldn't be the reason for our SI now. We are only on our 2nd medicated cycle now. I'm interested in others thoughts, though, because I think I will always question that morph number until we get a bfp!  

kimberm0511

Technically, my dh doesn't have any issues, but his morphology is on the lower end of average. My RE said it may or may not be an issue...our issue is a hostile cervix. However, his explanation of morphology was good. He said that normal shaped sperm can penetrate the egg easily and abnormal has a lot of trouble. He said that even his slightly low morphology could make it harder for the sperm that does make it through the cervix to penetrate. We wound up eventually doing IVF with ICSI bc of this. It worked, but I miscarried. Good luck to you!!

mrsbnlmel

I'm in a similar situation. I have PCOS and we had always assumed all the issues were on my end. DS was conceived after a few months of Metformin for me. DH never even had a SA. We then conceived naturally once and miscarried. After that we started having further issues and moved on to Femara and the RE. 

The advice of our RE is almost exactly as Jen up above- that his great motility and count will probably cancel out the low morph. We also have 2%. The RE did not even suggest we consider IVF due to that one low number. I might be wrong as I'm new to a lot of this, but I'd want a repeat SA before assuming you need to move on to IVF. 

All that said though, we've haven't had success yet. We plan to do IUI next cycle in hopes that the morph will improve after the sperm wash. For us OOP, IVF is not an option, so I'm really hopeful that this low number doesn't have to equal IVF. GL 

lmielocl1

My DH has less than 1% normal morphology and we ended up going straight to IVF in 2009 (after 2 years of TTC on our own & with clomid) as a result (if I had to do it again knowing what I know today, I probably would not have.)  Our IVF did not work and our FET was an early loss. For financial reasons, we decided to step back to IUI/injectables.  Our DS was conceived on our 4th IUI/injectables cycle. We also conceived our angel on our 1st IUI/injectable cycle when we started to TTC # but we lost him at 18w due to a cord accident.  I think you definitely have a good chance of getting pregnant if your motility/count are good.   We are now looking at low counts as well as morphology issues so we are considering IVF - although I am overwhelmed by the cost factor of it so not sure really what to do?  

 Wishing you the best!!