[chope]

I am new in here but I have been following your journeys......Wondering if any of you have had an experience like mine. We went with a 22 year old donor who has had two previous cycles with pregnancies in both and embryos left to freeze for both even for one of the couple that had male issues.

Well, we were her third donation. She is 22 years old. My husband no sperm problems at all. Dr. told us that we have to do ICSI anyway because everybody does it to increase chances. We were skeptic but we wanted to do everything possible for this cycle to work, so we went with it.

Retrieval day came everything was looking good. She gave us 14 eggs, 10 mature and 7 fertilized but none with good quality...... WHAT ? what do you mean ? She is young and my husband doesn't have sperm problems at all..... How is that possible. Her two previous cycles were exceptional so I know she has quality eggs.

Well making the stoy short the cycle didn't work for us. We lost $15,000. We didn't get pregnant and the only answer that we got when we asked was that "every cycle is different ? "

I honestly blame the lab. How do I know if the embryologist picked the correct sperms ? (We will never know...... I guess. The only thing that I know is that we are devastated and very afraid to even try again in the future.........

[Sanda]

chope - I'm sorry your cycle did not work out. The fertilization rate seems good (70%) I know that your DH doesn't have any sperm problems but has he had genetic testing? Sometimes a person can have a translocation that doesn't affect the person but can affect the offspring. Also, there is a very small chance that the donor and your DH are not compatible? And then there's the thought that the lab was not very good. I think there are a number of things that could have gone wrong but it's hard to say. With my experience, my MD said that I could have been part of the unlucky 30% that it didn't work for, but with more tries it will eventually work. But who has all that money to keep trying. I hope your RE can give you more insight on what went wrong.

[Igloochic]

I'm so sorry you've had this set back. I would agree that every cycle can be different, but still, proven donors normally produce somewhat consistently.

But on that ICSI thing....think about it next time. I'd personally leave a doctor who said I didn't need it but they do it anyway just because everyone else does. We actually had a phone consult with the embryologist about this issue because "most" at our clinic do it but we didn't want to take the risk if we didn't "need" to do it due to DH reasons. He felt that we didn't need to do it and instead went with regular fertililization because DH has no issues to worry about. I didn't want it because there some concerns with ICSI and future development for the child (an increase in special needs issues...not huge numbers, but it's still an increase). We had a difficult child for number one and didn't want to do that again, so we were pretty against ICSI. We did agree that if we had it we'd only do it on 50% of the eggs and then use the best of the bunch, with a preference towards the non ICSI eggies.

Now number of eggs, and DH issues should effect that choice, but to do anything because "everyone does" seems a bit well...not doctor like to me

[chantalTTC]

I'm so sorry you have to go through this. It's so hard... All the questioning and what if's - that's the hardest part for sure. I hope you can find some answers. Has your dh had an SCSA test? You should ask your doctor about it. He may have sperm that fertilize ok but you might find there are really issues. That happened to us - everyone thought my dh was fine, but then we did the SCSA and it came back really bad. The good thing is that they have more control over the quality of the sperm because it's so affected by environmental factors. So my dh took vitamins, changed some behaviors and voila, the SCSA came back great 3 months later.

I hope you get answers soon and find the strength to move forward. Best wishes to you and your dh.

[Sanda]

chantalTTC - What kind of supplements did your DH take to improve his sperm? I have my DH taking l-carnitine, acytlcarnitine, psycnogenol, vit C and E. His latest semen analysis did show improvement in motility but they did not run the strict kruger's test which would show the morphology and that's the main one we were concerned about since it was only 4% last time.