Hello there,
My husband and I have been trying to conceive actively for 1.5 years now. Prior to that we were doing more of a fertility timing method to keep from getting pregnant, but without any birth control or condoms for 2 years. He is 37 and I am 32.
After about 3 months of serious trying we decided to get basic fertility testing done because my OB/GYN was surprised we hadn't gotten pregnant especially considering our previous method.
My results were all normal - bloodwork normal, AMH good, tubes open, etc. Hubby's results showed male factor infertility and he was diagnosed with bilateral varicocele.
His first sperm results were like 17 mil count, 85% motility, but only 5% strict morphology and 15% forward progression. He also had low testosterone results and high DNA fragmentation of 32%. Two docs recommended varicocele surgery and said we could probably only get pregnant through IVF with those results otherwise.
Hubby had the varicocele microsurgery on both sides in June of last year. The surgery doctor (urologist) said things were looking good at the 3 month post surgery mark. All he did was a basic semen analysis and bloodwork to check the testosterone level. We never got those results on paper or did any other follow ups with the surgery doctor because I got pregnant after 4 months.
I miscarried that pregnancy at 11 weeks and ultrasound showed the baby had died unexpectedly at 8/9 weeks. We even had a totally normal ultrasound with heartbeat and good HCG/progesterone levels at 6 weeks so it was very shocking and traumatic, plus it happened right after Christmas.
We have tried to get pregnant again for 2-3 months now but it hasn't happened so far. Hubby decided to get another detailed semen analysis last week to be on the safe side. New analysis shows count has gone up to 38 mil but forward progression decreased significantly to 6%. Morphology is the same. He is scheduled to get new blood work, new DNA fragmentation test and an ultrasound. The fertility doctor (different than the surgery doc) thinks that he still feels some varicocele veins on the left side despite the surgery.
So basically I am very frustrated because it seems that the surgery did not really help enough to get pregnant and keep the pregnancy and there many even still be some veins left. I read that if the DNA fragmentation is still high there is a greater chance of miscarriage and birth defects even if I do get pregnant naturally.
I am seriously considering whether we should just skip to IUI or IVF/ICSI depending on how bad the next round of results is. I don't want to keep trying to get pregnant naturally and then have another miscarriage.
Anyone else gone through something similar?