I found out today we'll be ordering off the a la carte menu from the lab. My husband's semen analysis came back, and apparently all is not well with his swimmers. The count's good, the motility's good...but the morphology (that is, the shape of the sperm) is not so good.
Our doctor has said we'll need to use intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) to fertilize our donor's eggs.
Big sigh. Well, I was running out of things to worry about, anyway, in between the sweats and headaches caused by my favorite drug, Lupron.
I talked to the egg donation coordinator, and she says this is not a bad thing. Many programs routinely use ICSI for all donor egg procedures because it maximizes the success of a very expensive treatment option....
My husband's more cheerful about it than I am. I told him the results and he said, "See, I'm getting old too." Nice, honey. Very nice. But he meant well.
I'm not sure how I feel about this. We used ICSI in one of our pregnancies -- for our little boy, lost at 9 weeks. I certainly can't blame ICSI for the miscarriage; that was most likely due to my defective oocyte, given that I produced a grand total of one egg during the whole IVF cycle. Surely the problem was with my egg, and not my husband's sperm. Surely....
Oh well. Nothing to do but keep going. I hope someday that I'll have a baby in my arms and all of these dark hours will be like watching daytime TV with a sinus infection--nothing but a bad memory.
3 comments:
Hi Bee,
We have the same issue, bad morphology. I think I might have to start my own blog with the feelings that news brought on -- what if it hasn't been me all this time after all? The RE didn't take issue with it in the past, when we were doing IUI's but now, with an IVF, he insists on ICSI. Well, if the sperm can't find its way into an egg in a little dish how the hell was an IUI supposed to work?
So here we are now. I told the Dr. I wasn't all that thrilled with the idea of ICSI, though I understood its benefit in our situation and he made (for once) an interesting suggestion. If we have enough eggs, we could split them up and allow half to fertilize naturally. Something to consider.
Now, what exactly constitutes "enough" eggs? TBC...
Hi Eden,
You SHOULD start your own blog, and give me the link to it!!
I share your suspicions and fears...I THINK our problem has been me all along because my husband is "proven" -- he has a son -- and I really did respond badly to fertility medications, indicating that my reserve is low, and likely quality too.
Your REs idea was a good one. As to what's "enough"...this is no help but the first thing that popped into my mind was: Enough to get me pregnant!!! :D
Hi Bee,
We had ICSI done with all our eggs. We got 100% fertilization. We considered spliting them also but went ahead and did them all cause we only had 10 eggs.
I'm not worried about doing this at all (naive again maybe? :)).
Kat.
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