Poor Sperm

[EddieR10]

My wife and I are going through the IVF process and the problem is the low count and poor quality of my sperm. I've had test and procedures done trying to figure out why of if there's a blockage, but the overall opinion of the specialists has been that something happened before I was even born that may have caused my body to just be a poor creator of sperm. My count is very low, and the motility isn't very good. That having been said, are there any medications, pills, or anything that anyone here has taken or has done to help? I tried accupuncture as I was told it might help but it didn't do anything at all. Please let me know of any thoughts you might have...any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

[hopefulalways]

Hello Eddie.

My husband and I have been trying to have a child for 2 years going on 3 years now. And my dh has NO SPERM...they tried a biopsy on him and nothing was found, but they had enough hope to say that there could be a possiblity that it's just blocked somewhere..and that it won't come out the 'regular' way and it might just needed to be extracted...therefore, my dh did the micro TESE, and his urologist said that he might have a chance of finding sperm..and if he does the motility and quality might not be that good...and if we do find any, than we would have to do IVF with ICSI to insert the sperm directly into the egg for fertilization.

And well with our case..of my dh having NO SPERM....they were able to find one sperm, and then they retracted enough tissue from that area and they were able to find enough to fertilize 20 embroyos and 6 made it to the blast stage, AND..still have enough mircrotese sperm to freeze.

Right now, the only problem we are having now is..I can get pregnant but i keep having early miscarriages. This is my second one now...and i did tests to ensure it wasnt' my body rejecting the embryo, but all tests came back normal...so we're just going to try again and pray that i carry to term. If not...it might jsut be chromosmal issues or the sperm quality...we're not sure..but not giving up hope.

I just shared my story to say that, I still believe there is ALOT of hope for you..knowing that you a low sperm count, whereas my husband had NONE...

His urogolist also put him on CLOMID..as he thought that would also help his hormones and increase and get a sperm count...so i'm thinking that it might work for you..or to give it a try in your case..ask your urologist about it.

And another thing...if you haven't seen a urologist and you're not happy with their results..seek a second opinion..that's what we did. The first appt. with one urogolist told us....our only hope is to use donor sperm adopt and he put him on clomid for medication...and we didn't settle for that as we did our own research on the microTESE..and then the second urologist gave us alittle bit more hope...

I am praying that you find some answers and that you and your wife will have a child soon. All the best!

[EddieR10]

Thanks for all the feedback. My wife and I have had 3 attemps with IVF so far, all with me producing samples on the day of the retrieval. The first time, we were able to get 12 embryos...the second time, we actually had none...adn the third time, we had 12 embryos again, but only 3 made it to day 3.

Anyway, I agree on the thought that there's definitley hope since my body does have the ability to create sperm, I'm just hoping to enhance that ability as much as possible. Also, the urologist who I just saw was the second one as I didn't like the first one too much, and he didn't think that a biopsy would do me much good as he just feels my body is a poor creator of sperm. We have another attempt coming and we’re going to do what we’ve been doing, which is me providing a fresh sample on the day of the retrieval. I hope there’s enough in there to get us a few embryos and get us a baby.

I have another question that will probably sound very ignorant: If a baby is created from poor quality sperm, will that increase the chances that the baby may have some sort of abnormality or something? Does anyone know anything relating to this? I feel as if her getting pregnant will only be half the battle, as I think the poor quality of my sperm may also affect the overall health of our potential child.

[brit1612]

Eddie- My husband and I have done 4 ivf attempts and have had 2 miscarrages. He has low sperm count and all that good stuff. My re told him that we could try to do those different things to get his count up but he did not recommend it. His count is in the thousands and the doc said since it should be in the millions that it would be a waste of time. Even if the meds worked and raised his count some, it wouldn't really matter because it would still be low enough to need to do an ivf cycle. I am not trying to be a downer, if your count is a lot higher it may be something to think about.

Also, I have heard of many people being succesfull with low count and ivf, but I have also seen a lot of miscarrages. My re believes our miscarrages have been caused by bad quality embryos, which is most likely caused by the poor sperm quality. We have moved on to donor embryos and just got a positive on our first fet. It is very early so time will tell. If this pregnancy is a success, then I truely beleive the sperm quality was the problem. I am not trying to give you negative info, I just wish I was more realistic in the beginning. The first IVF my doc acted like we would get pregnant for sure. Our re says that we still have a chance of having a baby from the two of us, through ivf, but who knows how many miscarrages we would have to go through before it would happen. Good luck to ya'll and I pray that you will be one of the lucky ones!!

[CT_Michele]

Eddie- DH and I did ivf w/icsi and TESE due to extrememly low sperm count and poor motility. I had no issues on my end. DH's sperm problem also seems to have no diagnosis that we can figure out. His count was so low that there was no sperm in the ejaculate and we had no ption but to try tese with a uroligist. Thankfully, they found some sperm, we froze 2 viles and then thawed and used it the day of my retrieval. We transferred 2 perfect 8 celled embies. We were successful and our baby is now 6 months old.

We are about to go through this all again hoping for number 2. We thought we had enough sperm left frozen, but we can't risk it and are doing a fresh tese this time. I just wanted to comment about your concern of abnormalities. We were afraid of that too. We were most concerned that if we had a boy, maybe he would have similar issues to that of dh's. We also thought, if the sperm is not strong enough to get out, swim, find the egg and fertilize it on its own, then what does that mean for our future baby. No one could really answer those questions for us, but what I can tell you is that our baby is perfectly healthy and developmentally normal. All of our prenatal tests came back fine, and she is just perfect.

Good luck on whatever is next for you and your wife. I will answer any questions I can for you if you have more.

[Warren Dew]

I have another question that will probably sound very ignorant: If a baby is created from poor quality sperm, will that increase the chances that the baby may have some sort of abnormality or something? Does anyone know anything relating to this? I feel as if her getting pregnant will only be half the battle, as I think the poor quality of my sperm may also affect the overall health of our potential child.

It's been shown that sperm production and morphology is controlled by the father's body, and not by the genes actually in the sperm. If you do get a child, it shouldn't be any less healthy than you or your wife, at least not for reasons having to do with the sperm.

If the sperm production problem is genetic, it might be passed on to any sons you have. However, a lot of problems like that are not genetic. For example, it seemed like I was able to improve my sperm counts and motility by wearing my underwear looser - briefs worn tightly keep the gonads too warm for optimal sperm production.

[Sari]

Hello Eddie:

My DH has low count and motilily. We tried CLOMID a couple of years ago for a long time and he improved. But my Obgyn said to try naturally and nothing happen. When we went to IUI the count went down and Clomid didn't help anymore. Right now my RE recomended Proxeed. You can find it online. He haven't been tested yet so I don't know if its working.