Anyone without fertlity problems get pregnant via IUI? DH diagnosed w/testicular cancer.

AlexK2015 · December 2015

Hi all,

I'm new here and just wondered if anyone has had success with IUI when there were no fertility problems involved. My husband and I just started trying to get pregnant in November. I had been on the pill so I figured it may take a little while for my body to regulate and get back to normal, so we weren't expecting to get pregnant right away. A few days ago my husband was diagnosed with Testicular Cancer. He had surgery to remove his right testicle yesterday and everything went well. The cancer hadn't spread at all and he is now technically cancer-free according to the doctor. To help prevent it from coming back though he will undergo 1-2 rounds of low-dose chemo, which should bring his chances of it returning down to 1 in 1000. Having one testicle does not decrease our chances of having children at all, but chemotherapy does as it can often affect fertility. Because of this we will be going to a sperm bank before he starts his treatment just to ensure that if he does in fact become infertile we can still have children of our own.

Neither of us have any known fertility issues. I know that you never know and maybe one of us does have an issue, but for the sake of this post lets just say that we don't. Has anyone been in a similar circumstance of getting IUI without any known fertility issues? I'm just wondering what our chances are of becoming pregnant via IUI if both of us are fertile or whether we are looking at a strong possibility of needing IVF. The fertility clinic I contacted said that ideally they'd like to have 3 separate sperm samples with 3-5 day intervals in between each visit. I don't think we are going to be able to do this though since my DH will be starting treatment relatively soon. We are hoping to at least get 2 samples in though.

We are both about to turn 30 and while we have been together nearly 15 years, we put off having children in order to travel, focus on our careers, etc. Now I am wishing we had tried to start earlier

kynbar5 · December 2015

This is probably a better question for the TTC boards. Good luck and I hope everything works out for you both!

JLaVO888 · December 2015

No advise but just sending well wishes your way as you embark on this journey. I'm sure you have been through tons of stress in the last few weeks/months. The ladies on the trying to conceive board are great, just make sure to lurk a little to get used to proper etiquette.

ecwk · December 2015

Actually I lurk ttc a bit and as they are actually ttc (many for the first time) they might not be totally able to answer your question.
Maybe try the infertility board as the ladies there may have experience with IUI. Best of luck to you!!

suchaglencoco · December 2015

ecwk said:
Actually I lurk ttc a bit and as they are actually ttc (many for the first time) they might not be totally able to answer your question.
Maybe try the infertility board as the ladies there may have experience with IUI. Best of luck to you!!

I second the infertility board idea but PLEASE lurk there first before posting there.

Also, as someone who struggled with infertility I can tell you that our clinic normally suggests preparing mentally for 3 iuis to get pregnant. Although the iui helps get the sperm closer to its destination, the sperm still needs to do its job and it may not happen.
Best of luck to you.

lalala2004 · December 2015

kynbar5 said:
This is probably a better question for the TTC boards. Good luck and I hope everything works out for you both!

No, they would not appreciate the question and send her here. Many of them have never been pregnant.

xtraumaxqueenx · December 2015

Never been in your situation, but I have a good friend who used IUI to conceive her daughter with donated sperm. No fertility issues at all, but a normal lesbian couple. She got pregnant the first go round.

BrightenMySky · December 2015

I have done IUI. I have no known problems, DH has a morphology issue (which is a debatable problem, as I understand it)--you can see our history in my sig below. There are things you can do with IUI to give yourself another boost--like I used Clomid to increase the number of eggs because of the sperm quality issue, and I would think you might do similar to increase the odds of something working each cycle if you were to do IUI. That said, if your DH did a SA after treatment and you discovered that there would be no way to get another sample for treatments, I would probably seriously consider going straight to IVF. IVF is a much bigger boost, and if you know you only have 2 tries, I would want to talk to an RE about maximizing the chances of success.

I hope your husband's prognosis continues to be good & this question ends up being totally hypothetical for you!

BostonBaby1 · December 2015

I can't answer your question directly, but I can tell you that you should seriously consider whether or not it would hurt his chances to delay treatment for enough time to collect 3 to 4 or possibly even 5 samples. Obviously, everybody's situation is different, but my mother has gone through cancer three times and my father also went through cancer. Every situation is different. Sometimes it will not effect the prognosis to delay treatment for a week or two. Since you don't know how many vials of sperm you will get from each of his samples, or what the concentration and counts may be, I would definitely err on the side of having more than less. Also, they like to have an ideal three days in between but if you can only have two days and manage to store another sample, that would be better than not having the extra. My suggestion is to speak with his oncologist and find out how they feel about it. Ultimately, you need to go by the advice of his oncologist.

Sending the best of luck to you and your DH.

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Anyone without fertlity problems get pregnant via IUI? DH diagnosed w/testicular cancer.

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