[moorebaby]

ok....here's a brief history.

me: no fertility issues at all.

dh: had 1 undescended testicle when he was younger, which wasn't caught until he was about 6 years old. it was then surgically descended. his younger brother had the same issue, but according to my dh it was both testicles in his brother. based on this it was explained to them by their mother that my dh wouldn't have as bad of fertility problems as his brother since he only had it in 1 testicle. well mu dh's brother did in fact have issues & underwent ivf with icsi at the same clinic as my dh & i did. they put 2 embbies in & both ferilized with 1 splitting, giving them triplets. this all worked the 1st try & now they have 6 year old triplet boys.

my dh & i did our 1st ivf with icsi treatment this past september....it didn't work. i stimmed perfect....25 eggs were retrieved, 20 were mature, but only 4 fertilized. we did a 3dt with 2 embbies, of which 1 was a near perfect 8-cell embbie & the other was an average 8-cell embbie. i got preggo with my 1st beta being 116. my 2nd beta increased by 69% & by the time the 3rd beta was done i increased only 33%. this is when they told me it was either ectopic or a chemical pregnancy. long story short, it ended up being a miscarrige...

our re & the other re's at the clinic reviewed our plan. the nurse called me thursday & said that the fact that only 4 fertilized out of 20 & i miscarried is all due to the low sperm count & poor sperm quality. i felt so bad telling my dh because i don't want him to feel like it's all his fault. his undescended testicle is what caused him to have the sperm issues. anyways they also said that our chances of getting pregnant would be higher if we used donor sperm in addition to his sperm on our next ivf/icsi cycle. that is not something either of us feels comfortable doing. my dh was referred to a urologist who specializes in fertility issues in males. he couldn't get an appointment until december 1st so we won't have any info for a while unless an appointment opens up before then. i'm assuming the donor sperm thing is an option & if we choose not to do that, we can still do the ivf/icsi cycle.

my question is....has anyone had any experience with a similar situation? any info would be appreciated! good luck to all of you ladies....wishing you nothing but bfp's!

[girl121]

Hi Moorebaby -

I just wanted to let you know that I have a similar story. I have no issues, but my DH had retractile testes which didn't get caught until he was about 6 or 7. He had the same surgery as your DH did. He now has low-ish count and motility, and 0% strict morphology. We were told to go straight to IVF/ICSI, but decided to try IUI first anyway, just to give it a shot. So we're going in for IVF next cycle, if this doesn't work.

I'm sure that donor sperm will increase your chances, but are you willing to try that? BTW, I was told to anticipate going through IVF at least 2 - 3 times with our situation...