For Nick and I, the main reason we are unable to get pregnant is due to male infertility. This has been one of the hardest parts for me. Knowing that Nick is holding this huge weight on his shoulders. Many times he has said, “this is my fault”, “I can’t give you what you want most in the world”.
Can you imagine the pain he is feeling? I cant.
All I can do, is support him and do my best to remind him that we are going through this together. This isn’t on him, WE are 1 in 8.
Statistics show that 1 in every 8 couples will face infertility. Think about your group of friends. Statistically, one couple of the group might be struggling with infertility and not telling you, or may not know that they will be. That is huge. Yet, it seems this is something that is never talked about.
For 7 months, Nick and I have been going through this heartbreak alone. Of course, our parents knew. But, to friends, we were fine! Before hanging out, I would have an internal pep talk. “Put a smile on. If anyone talks about kids, brush it off and act like we are not trying. Laugh it off. Whatever you do…don’t let them know what is going on inside. Be strong.” I will get more into my feelings and how I got through this later. For now, I want to let you know what male infertility is.
Male infertility.
By definition on google “Male infertility refers to a male’s inability to cause pregnancy in a fertile female. In humans it accounts for 40-50% of infertility. It affects approximately 7% of all men. Male infertility is commonly due to deficiencies in the semen.”
For men, there are many things they look at during a semen analysis. But the main three things are: sperm count, motility, and morphology.
Sperm count.
This should be anywhere from 20 million to over 250 million.
Motility
This should be greater than 40%. This is how the sperm move. They need to be moving upstream to get to the egg.
Morphology
This has a few different categories. Greater than 15% is probable normal fertility. 6-14% is impaired fertility. And less than 5% is poor fertility.
When they look at morphology they look at the head shape, neck/mid-piece shape, and tail of the sperm.
Who knew there was so much that had to be right with one little sperm? Not me!
So for Nick, he has motility and morphology problems. His sperm count is normal but on the “lower normal”, right at the 20 million mark. His motility on our first semen analysis was 16% (normal is greater than 40%) and his morphology is 1%. On our second semen analysis Nicks motility had increased to 45% (WOOHOO).
Let me backtrack a little…
Nick and I were referred to a specialist, who was actually a Urologist in Fayetteville. After a long 2 weeks of waiting, and me going crazy, I finally got ahold of them and they told me they refer male infertility to Tulsa Fertility. So as soon as I found that out, I made a call and got into Tulsa Fertility fairly quickly.
At our first appointment with Dr. McKinney, she went over all of the blood work I had done so far, and went over Nicks semen analysis that was done through the Fayetteville hospital lab. She informed us that the Fayetteville lab is a good start but not what who want to trust when we are talking about Nicks fertility. So she ordered for Nick to do another semen analysis at their facility, for me to get an HSG test done, and between both of us, we had around 15 blood tests to do before we could discuss any further treatment options.
After Nicks second semen analysis and my HSG test. *Which is a test done to see if a woman’s fallopian tubes are open or blocked. They do this by inserting a catheter into your cervix, blowing up a balloon filled with blue dye, and taking x-rays of your stomach to see if the dye flows through your fallopian tubes and empties into your stomach.* My HSG test came back normal.
We went back to Tulsa Fertility. At the last appointment Dr. McKinney told us that motility is something that can be “altered”. If a man has a cold with a fever a few months before it will decrease his motility – basically she told us there are a lot of environmental factors that can affect sperm motility. However, she told us that morphology is genetic. There is nothing we can do to “fix” morphology issues.
So, during our third appointment with Dr. McKinney, she looked at Nicks semen analysis and told us that because Nick has 1% morphology. We have a 1% chance of getting pregnant naturally.
Let that sink in.
1% is not a lot. Every month we have a chance…but very small. This hit me like a brick wall. A normal couple has a 20% chance every month to get pregnant. We have 1%.
She then started going over our “options”.
There is IUI, which is intrauterine insemination. This is where they would take a sample from Nick, wash the sperm to get as many of the “bad” sperm out as they could, put it into a catheter, insert into me and put the sperm closer to the fallopian tubes which could increase the chance of fertilization.
She told us IUI would put us at around a 10% chance of getting pregnant. Well….our thought was, we still aren’t close to the normal couple. We did not like those odds.
So, she moved on to IVF. This is In Vitro Fertilization. In order to go this route, I will be on lots of medication via shots. I will grow as many eggs as my body will allow, they will take those eggs out of me in surgery, take a sample from Nick, fertilize each egg through ICSI, which is where they take one good sperm and physically inject it into the egg with a needle, see how many fertilize, freeze the embryos that make it, and then transfer an egg back into my uterus and we will hope and pray it sticks so we can have a baby. IVF would put us at a 30-50% chance of getting pregnant. We like these odds a lot more.
After leaving Tulsa that day, we talked on our 2 hour drive home. We decided IVF is the route we would take. However, we also decided we would like to get one more opinion. Not because we didn’t like Tulsa Fertility, they have been AMAZING. I can’t say enough good things about Dr. McKinney. But, because of the amount of money we are about to spend, we want to be absolutely sure that we pick the right place. The place we feel is best for us.
So, we have another appointment on July 12th, at the Reproductive Resource Center in Kansas City. We got this doctors name from my mother in law, she knows someone who went there and had a successful IVF treatment.
After meeting with the doctor in Kansas City, we will choose which office is best for us, and start our journey with IVF as soon as we can.
God doesn’t expect us to handle this. He wants us to hand this over to him.
Blessings,
Nicole
Journey To Baby Gneiting 