TTC #1 with mild - moderate MFI

[BlueDaisy84]

Hi everyone,

I'm so happy to be joining this forum! I have been lurking this site on and off for the past 2 years but didn't want to get too attached to a particular website -- now I'm in the mood to belong somewhere lol.

I'll briefly explain our journey below

Aug 2011 - Married, both 26 (now both 29)
Jan 2012 - Actively TTC
Jan 2013 - First Fertility Clinic
Feb 2013 - First SA - 12 mil/ml and 30% motility, everything else normal Fert Dr. not concerned one bit, says a few IUI's should do it. Start taking Fertilaid (2 months total)
May 2013 - IUI #1 - Postwash - 100K and 0% motility (blame it on the Fertilaid). We ask for referral to urologist, Fert doctor says no. Fert Clinic very unorganized and unprofessional, stop going to them.
June 2013 - go to Urologist through family doctor - Grade I varicocele is found.
August 2013 - Varicocele Embolization
November 2013 - New SA - results skyrocket - 20 mil/ml and 70% motility
November 2013 - April 2014 - TTC on our own
April 2014 - SA shows 18 mil/ml and 20% motility - heartbroken
May 2014 - change to reputable fertility clinic and do IUI #2 with postwash 6 million good sperm - BFN - Start using ice on DH 2x a day
August 2014 - IUI #3

Wow that's a lot to write. I look forward to being on this board with all the LTTTCer's and hope to get our long awaited BFP soon!

Baby Dust to all!! xo

 

[RainbowDrop_x]

Welcome to BnB

 

[Bevziibubble]

Hi and welcome!

 

[DolceBella]

Welcome to BnB!!

 

[LeezaNDave]

Hi BlueDaisy!
Believe it or not, I joined this website specifically so I can get in touch with you. I read your post to Comet and then I searched for your username and found this comment. I couldn't believe the similarities in our situations. We are also in Toronto, and we are currently going to a fertility clinic since August 2015. TTC for 16 months as of today.

My hubby's first SA came back with:
38 million
16% Total Motility
Progressive Motility 14.3%
Morphology 2% normal forms
DNA Frag 13.6%

We couldn't understand why all his numbers were so bad because he was doing everything right, diet was fine, etc.

We asked the fert doc LifeQuest if my hubby might have varicocele and we kept pressing the clinic for a referral to a urologist but the doc kept putting us off and saying my hubby's numbers are just fine. Since his concentration/count was truly over the WHO 15-million minimum required, we dismissed that it could be varicocele.

So I continued doing my obsessive amount of research into male factor infertility and looking for explanations for his poor motility and treatment options. We changed our already-great diet to extremely good, researched ALL supplements we could find that could ameliorate motility. Hubby started taking FertilPro and research I did said the quantity of mg for each vitamin in FertilPro wasn't enough to make the big difference he needed in his numbers. So we bought about 17 more supplements and he took them religiously for two full months. He did another SA two months after being on supplements -- on October 26.

His numbers jumped to:
34 million (less count; made me wonder HOW?!)
Total Motility 38.1% (up 22.3%!!!)
Progressive Motility 22.9% (up 8.6%)
Morphology 7% (up 5%)
DNA Frag 11.2 (down 2.4%)

We were really happy the numbers went up a lot more than we expected but we were curious because the breakdown of defects showed that head defects were unchanged -- at 90% head defects!

We went to an infertility naturopath on Nov. 14 and she is the one that recommended my hubby start icing his balls with a bag of frozen peas for 10 min a day. Not sure that's quite enough, though. We ended up buying Snowballs, and hubby wasn't impressed. We bought gel icepacks at Canadian Tire and those icepacks stay frozen for MANY hours (the Snowballs would get warm in 10 min!! The gelpacks are way too thin and sparse!)

Just last week I contacted Sara, a sperm specialist (from website dontcookyourballs) I told her all his stats from the two SAs and she was incredibly helpful. She was the VERY FIRST person to suggest to us that he may have varicocele. So I physically checked my hubby and saw it DOES look like he has varicocele. He went to his GP and indeed did get confirmed that he has a varicocele. Now we're waiting for an appointment to see a urologist at Mount Sinai that specializes in male infertility. Not sure he should do embolization though! But we want to know how bad the varicocele is.

We also got a referral to go to another fertility clinic because we were also finding our current clinic (LifeQuest) extremely unorganized and the doctor very arrogant. We have a first appointment on Feb 2016 at Mount Sinai with Dr. Greenblatt. She is apparently a top fertility doctor in Toronto (read this in TorontoLife Magazine and articles online).

I would love to connect with you, maybe even chat by phone or get together to information share since we're both in very similar circumstances and we are both in Toronto. I'm incredibly curious if you ever got pregnant since your last post I read about your hubby icing and such. If you'd like to get in touch to information share and such, even support, please let me know.

But please do respond either way. I'm so curious if the icing made a big difference on the SA stats and I'm incredibly curious to know if you ever got pregnant since your last post.

Hope to hear from you!

Elisa

 

[dizzy65]

welcome to bnb!

 

[BlueDaisy84]

Hi Leeza,
I would love to get in touch with you!
I will share a whole slew of updates with you.
This website won't let me post my email address since I haven't made over 10 posts so I'm not sure of the best way to get a hold of me!
Can I find you on facebook somehow?

Thanks,

BlueDaisy

 

[LeezaNDave]

I'm so happy to hear from you! Okay so I'm not on Facebook but my p-number is six four seven six zero nine two four seven four. Lol see if that works

 

[LeezaNDave]

Daisy we got really bad news today... hubby's third sperm assesment results came in today and it's much much worse than the very first one he ever did. We cried a lot today...frustration tears and sadness and feeling so hopeless tears... not sure why his numbers got so good a month ago and now got way worse than ever before....

 

[xJG30]

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