New and Frustrated

hlove516 · August 2018

Hello all, thanks for reading, and good luck on everyone’s journey TTC!

DH and I have been actively TTC since Oct 2016, so almost 2 years. After the first year of no luck, I made an appt to do a fertility screening, my test results all came back normal, but DH has 3% NF morphology (4% is normal). This kinda discouraged and terrified me that we may never get pregnant. But other than that his count and motility were both off the charts. We didn’t stop trying, but I tried to stop getting my hopes up every month. Everyone around me has been successful getting pregnant, and we think we do everything right, and we have problems, it’s very frustrating.

I’ve been doing crazy research on our options, and it looks like we will have to either do IUI or IVF. I checked with my insurance provider and they do cover IVF which is great, but I’ve just been terrified to actually make the call for consultations. Any advice? What were the first steps? My DH recently started on FertilAid, a supplement he found that’s supposed to help boost his sperm, any luck with this?

Thanks for reading, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

mbradfo2 · August 2018

I dragged my feet forever it seems to see the RE due to similar nerves. We were TTC in 2012 and I didn't see an RE until 2015! I wish we had gone earlier since our journey might have been a bit shorter. Most RE's will want to start with IUIs unless there's a glaring issue with your tests. Sometimes they might even say to just do meds and timed intercourse (they'll check for ovulation signs with blood tests) for a couple cycles. They're the experts! If you don't feel confident in your doctor's decisions, you should always get a second opinion but it's also very easy for us to over-research and mistake book knowledge for clinical experience. The RE will probably also have some ideas for supplements which may be different than the one your husband is taking -- I'm not terribly familiar with it but male factor wasn't an issue for us. Vitamin D, CoQ10, DHEA, prenatals are the usual course of supplements recommended for ladies by RE's. They might have some special formulations they like to prescribe.

They will probably run some additional ones to what you've had so far and depending on how old your current tests are, they might redo those as well. My RE likes to have labs within 1 year, including sperm testing. You'll probably get an HSG (don't read too much about it -- it's really NOT that bad as many make it sound) to check to see if everything is clear and anatomy looks good; they also like to run bloods on specific days of your cycle to make sure hormones are going in the right directions. They will also check to see if you are ovulating normally this way.

Take heart in the fact that most people who seek treatment and do procedures eventually wind up where they want to be -- I think around 70% of couples who seek treatment do give birth and I'm sure an additional percentage find another way to start their family, whether thru adoption or surrogacy. Our IUI's were all BFNs (not terribly surprising, IUI is only marginally more successful than natural attempts for people with my dx of unexplained infertility) but
*TW*
our first IVF and FET gave us a beautiful baby girl. Who I am currently attempting to get to sleep in her crib >.<

It's a long journey sometimes and hard, but you've found a good place to get some support!

Feel free to reach out to me if you want any specific tips or questions or just a sounding board

more14 · August 2018

Hi @hlove516, sorry you found yourself here but you came to the right place.

I think the first question is why are you so terrified of fertility treatments? What is it about the idea that scares you so much?

IMO, it is important to start treatments when you are as calm and centered as you can be. The journey is stressful enough that you should do your best to be calm and positive about it. Added stress is never a good thing for your health.
So the first thing would be to work on what's causing you anxiety now and take it in small steps.

Once you thing you can handle it, find a clinic you like, find a doctor you can trust, and go to a consultation with an open mind and all the questions you can possibly have. Remember, going to a consultation doesn't mean you have to accept what the doctor tells you. If you have doubts, go get a second opinion.

Ours is also MFI and our doctor recommended we go straight to IVF to spare us the low chance we have with IUI. So that's what we did.

Whichever way you end up going, I wish you the best of luck and I hope your IF journey is short but successful.

LauraJon2015 · August 2018

This totally sucks, but you’re not alone. This is not your fault.

I get a lot of anxiety before every RE apt, especially the first one, but after each I think to myself, oh that wasn’t too bad. Don’t expect your doctor to be perfect, because none are (I’ve been really disappointment in mine), but do expect them to dramatically increase your chances for pregnancy. That said... it still may take a while. Fertility medicine is not that advanced, so even if they could pin point exactly what was wrong, they probably don’t have a way to address it directly. Lots of guess work and increasing the odds.

My DH has sub-normal morphology. Doctor didn’t seem to think this was a big deal (“it only takes one sperm”). My cycles were irregular, so dr focused on that. We just did our second IUI, now just a week to wait before testing.

I have no insurance coverage (although I can use my HSA $). Doctor had us try just letrozole with timed intercourse, now we are doing 3-4 IUIs, then the big jump to IVF. My RE tries to keep costs down, but she know I’m having a really hard time dealing so we are ramping up the treatments. Be sure to tell your dr about your insurance coverage, as they may be more willing to start IVF sooner if they know it won’t bankrupt you.

My biggest recommendation is to write down what you want to understand from your visit with the RE. These appointments aren’t cheap, especially considering time and emotional costs, so set yourself up to make the most progress during your session.

hlove516 · August 2018

Thank you so much! All of this information is helpful. And yes my tests were just run this year, so still fairly new. I’m going to make that call to schedule an appt ASAP.

LoveDontCostAThing · August 2018

Hey!
Sorry you find yourself here, but you're definitely not alone. My husband also has morphology issues. Luckily, our insurance fully covers IVF, which is rare, so if yours does then I would highly recommend IVF with ICSI. In my opinion, the IUIs aren't a great option for this issue. We only did one and quickly moved on. I was TERRIFIED of needles, but they gave me numbing cream and patches and I quickly got over my fear. I know it sucks, but the quicker you do it the better

*TW* My third transfer resulted in my beautiful DS! He is now almost 10 months, and I can't believe it. We are thinking about doing another transfer within the next year. Don't lose hope, and feel free to reach out to me

optimisticmrsk · September 2018

Hi @hlove516! Our stories are super similar !! My DH and I started TTC on Aug 2016 , I‘d never gotten a positive pregnancy test so on Aug 2017 we did several tests, mine came normal and my DH’s were a bit low. So the Dr also recommended Fertilaid which seemed to work ! His SA numbers skyrocketed, however his morphology was still not great. We continued trying on our own for 4-5 months with zero luck (like you, I was anxious/stressed/in denial about doing IVF) but then I discovered our insurance covers IVF (So thankful !!) so we went to the IVF clinic for the first time on April 2018. Due to my husband having travelled to a country with Zika threat, they asked us to come back in August. Which we gladly did, so now we are about to start our first IVF cycle and I’m super excited and anxious to begin!! My advice for you would be to take it one day at a time , even though IVF seems super scary and overwhelming , I just try to focus on being grateful to even get a chance to do IVF! My other advice is to be prepared for a looooong wait. Everything with IVF is wait , wait , wait. I was really frustrated at first but from reading this forum it seems like that’s the norm. I hope whatever you decide to do, it brings you your miracle !! Keep me posted on your first appointment

mbradfo2 · September 2018

@optimisticmrsk
IVF is alot of hurry up and wait! Good luck with your first cycle!! Hopefully your only cycle! -crosses fingers-

optimisticmrsk · September 2018

Thank you @mbradfo2 !! And congrats on your precious girl ! Do you mind me asking if you have frozen embryos and if your plan is to have more children, will you do a transfer as soon as you feel ready to conceive again or will you first try naturally ? Just curious on other couples’ thought processes....

mayflower513 · September 2018

I think you have to be ready. We had a child naturally in 2015 after only trying for 3 months, and then got pregnant again (an oops) when he was 4 months. I’m pretty sure we’d had sex like once. That pregnancy was ectopic which was a shock to us and the doctors, as I had none of the precursors. So we figured we’d be fine when we were ready to try again. We said we wouldn’t do IVF if it didn’t happen, because we had one healthy child. Well, we tried for 2 years with no BFP’s. Then I went and got the HSG my OB had recommended like 6 months or a year prior and come to find out my remaining tube was also damaged. We were given a chance of about 2% of getting pregnant on our own. So the recommendation was either try to repair the tube and then try on our own, or remove it and go straight to IVF. That was in January, my tube removal was the end of March, and I did my IVF cycle and got my BFP in May. For us, we would have to use a frozen embryo (or do another round of IVF but we have 7 well graded frozen so why would we?) to get pregnant again since I now have no tubes.

Good luck with whatever you decide!

mbradfo2 · September 2018

@optimisticmrsk
We don't have any frozen embies left so I would have to go through the full IVF cycle to get some. That being said, we don't plan on any more children -- I'm not even sure it's worth risking my health since I got pre-E and would likely be high risk in future pregnancies. I have a little girl now who needs me to be healthy and I don't feel comfortable risking a high-risk pregnancy with potential complications. We were always a one+done family; it just took alot to get that "one"!

optimisticmrsk · September 2018

@mbradfo2 wow! Sorry to hear about your preeclampsia ! Totally understand why you would make that decision. When first talking about how many kids to have I would tell my husband I’d be happy with just one since I grew up as an only child and loved every minute of it

however he does want to have more than one, and I’m also ok with 2 or 3 , but now that we are on this IVF journey it really depends on how many embies we have left to freeze (fx we get enough on our first ivf cycle). Anyways , glad to hear your success story and that your family is now complete

brokenparents · September 2018

I have done a lot of research on helping sperm and sperm regeneration, etc. I make my husband a smoothie every day, it has berries and banana, green superfood powder, cacao powder, walnuts and pumpkin seeds. A lot of these are shown to help sperm. I also started us both taking COQ10. I wrote about these on my blog if you are interested, link in bio. Good luck!

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