#malefactorinfertility

[infertilemyrtle]

Yay!

Got a call that our long awaited appointment with the urologist (specialty in fertility) has been bumped up to next week!! Hoping he’s able to find the cause of our male factor infertility and help us fix it !

[definecomplicated]

Infertility

Wow, writing it makes it so real. Today we found out that my husband has azoospermia, meaning zero sperm count. From the research I’ve done online today, it seems there are two types of azoospermia: Unobstructve and obstructive. I’m hoping it’s obstructive - if that’s the case, he just needs surgery and hopefully we can get pregnant naturally. If it’s unobstructive, it means that we need to discuss other treatments, IVF, adoption, sperm donor. We’ve been trying for over a year focusing on fixing my ovulation issues and I feel like this past year has been such a fucking waste. 

[infertilemyrtle]

Part two; Our Diagnosis

Thanks for reading on. Your support means the world to us. ❤️

So after many a tiring months of trying to conceive, I decided that the old adage “just relax and it will happen” might be true! I refocused my energy into planning our beautiful wedding. We had the most beautiful day, September 15 2018. It was everything we wanted it to be. But as soon as we got back from our honeymoon, my baby kick started up again! I had been tracking my cycle with an app on my phone, Flo for the last two years and I was quite comfortable with my cycle. I had been very busy planning the big day but that longing for a baby was never too far from the forefront of my mind. Of course, now that we are married the family pressure has kicked in too! We had mostly kept our ttc life to ourselves during our engagement. Even now, there are quite a few close to us we just haven’t opened up to yet.

We decided to go to a fertility clinic and get checked out! Mike was quite nervous, with me being so regular and in tuned with my body he began to worry it was he who was causing the delay in pregnancy. Our first consultation went well. It was really basic medical history and a meet with the Dr. Our fertility Dr is just wonderful! He suggested a few “baseline tests” which would help determine any obvious problems. I had to have blood taken twice in my cycle and a sonohysterogram ultrasound. (Also known as a SHG. Or SONO) Mike simply had to make a “deposit” lol and they would test to see if everything was swimming right!

Our next appointment was the results. I was TERRIFIED. It may have been presumptuous but we had already talked about different avenues we might need to take to have a child. We were/are not against adoption, fostering and/or sperm donors. The latter was difficult to talk about. Anyone who knows my Husband knows his love for kids. He has said since the day I met him, he wants a family of his own! A child of his own. He was very receptive to the donor route though. It only broke my heart more. I want(ed) a baby that is half mine.. half is. Don’t we all? Either way, we went into the appointment with an open mind.

My results were great. Not a problem there. He even complimented my tubes. If you’re a woman ttc, you’ll know how sensitive we get about what’s out of our hands. Lol. Either way, it was nice to hear everything checked out on my side! Unfortunately, Mike wasn’t as lucky. While his actual count was average, the morphology was average too, his motility was a problem. His little swimmers are just ... unmotivated! Swimming around in circles is what the doctor said I believe. Lol. He suggested we see a urologist and check for a possible varicocele. This has been explained to us as a varicose vein in the testes which increases temperate in the testes and basically boils the swimmers. Yikes! However, in most scenarios easily repaired with a procedure done in office.

So we were officially diagnosed with Male Factor Infertility. Our dr suggested we go on the IVF wait list ASAP. This list is for a funded procedure called Invitro Fertilization. He also suggested while we wait for both the urologist and the IVF procedure, we could try interuterine insemination. (IUI). He says the motility number isn’t ideal for this but semen does fluctuate and we might still be successful. Lucky for us we are in Canada and fortunate enough to have coverage for IUI. We will be starting that next month!

We still remain hopeful and I still search and scour the internet for natural remedies and suggestions to help us conceive. Stay tuned for all the silly things I have tried during our journey. 🙂

[thewizardsfromtherock]

Sooooo excited to say we had our transfer this afternoon. 🐣 Had one really good quality blastocyst transferred. Looks like we will also have 4 Frosties ❄️❄️❄️❄️Now we wait ⏰#ivftransferday #malefactorinfertility #squidlet #ttccommunity #ivffirsttimer #ivfuk #ivfstory #ivfjourney #tww

[thewizardsfromtherock]

Too many emotions this morning! Today could be the 1st day of a new, exciting chapter in our journey! 🙏🏻😍🐣👶🏼💕#ivfjourney #ivfstory #ivfuk #ivffirsttimer #ttccommunity #squidlet #malefactorinfertility #ivftransferday

[claireeclectic]

Wear blue this Friday June 17 to help create awareness and remember those struggling with male infertility. #menshealthmonth #infertilitysupport #infertility #hopeforwaitingarms #malefactorinfertility

[mybarrenbeloved-blog]

Forever burned in my mind

Hello all, well I'll pick up where I left off at.  So my husband and I are living life, we got ourselves a house and we both have decent jobs. We also have a cute beagle pup named Charly and one sassy kitty named Chole (meme). Around this time we are still depressed about the situation, I mean there wasn't a day that went by that I wasn't reminded of a baby- on facebook, instagram, even in my personal life. I will tell you that I am a VERY proud aunt as of 4 beautiful nephews, 2 niece and 3rd niece expected in February. My sister, has 3 beautiful boys, Ian the oldest who was born when I was about 16, Jude who was born about 3 months after James and I started dating, Brennan who was born about a a year after we got our house and now our beautiful Goddaughter Judith who was born this September. My brother and his wife have 1 beautiful boy named Layne who was born a year after Jude, Arlyn who was born two years ago this Sunday and now another beautiful girl, Harper, is expected in February. Now let me tell you, I am the doting Aunt, I am the aunt that takes a billion pictures and is willing to take any of them any weekend. Sadly I am the envious little sister. I feel ashamed even tying this and yes at the moment I am crying. I can't help it, I yearn to have what they have- to make a family with my husband, to experience a beautiful soul growing in my womb, to have a child that my husband and I can say has his eyes, my curly hair, his sweet smile or my crooked second toe. It's something I think everyone wants, a child of your own-a piece of yourself and your beloved right? So lets fast forward to about November of 2013, well James works for an Oil Field company and his boss, his kind and generous boss knew how hard it was on James to go though this in fact he himself went through a similar issue when he was younger. So he leases a building that has fertility doctors working there and low and behold he refers us to Dr. David Ho, a Urologist. Dr. David Ho is great let me tell you- the first appointment they do a prostate exam (which was never done with his last doctor), of course blood tests, seaman analysis and instead of doing a procedure that costs ten grand he did an ultrasound, an ULTRASOUND to find out it there was a blockage. Honestly I was pretty pissed at Louisiana, I mean damn a ultrasound that costs what maybe $500 at the most over $10k? Seriously this doctor is great, oh I forgot to mention that we have to travel to Houston TX to see this doctor and we live in Central Louisiana which is about 4.5 hour drive, but well worth it. So Dr. Ho did not see any blockage, so he told James that he wanted to try to see if he had any active sperm down in his testicles- if any guys are reading this I should warn you this might make you hurt a little, anyways Dr. Ho wanted to do a testicular biopsy also known as a TESA which involves James being under anesthesia, thank God, and Dr. Ho sticking a needle into his scrotum and pulling out any active sperm. So the day comes and let me tell you it was a hard day, I can't tell you how many times I prayed, but after all we have been through I did not want to be negative about it but it was so hard being positive when you are so used to getting bad results, so I tried to be neutral, which meant whatever happens, happens we can't change it, we love each other and we will make it through- I mean we have so far. Oh I totally forgot to tell you but at the end of December 2012 we went to Colorado and James proposed to me in the mountains, of course I said YES, but anyways I waited and a procedure that usually takes 20-30 mins felt like hours, but Dr. Ho rushed out and sat right next to me on the couch and very briefly told me that “Okay we found some active sperm, not much and they are weak, but we found some and we will freeze them for you guys” He hands me his card and tells me “if you have any questions please call”. Now guys at this moment Im holding his card, a min passes by and I'm in shock, complete utter shock, they found SPERM, I feel the tears roll down my cheeks, I fumble with my phone to call his parents who were downstairs talking to his boss (which is his dads too) and in a rush of nonsense I somewhat tell them in my crazy fast dialect that they found something and they need to come up and while I hang up and they are on the way I call my mom and cry telling her they found something, of course she is emotional ( I get it from my momma) and she is so happy and now his parents are walking in and I quickly tell my mom I gotta go and that I'll call her back later. So they walk up and I tell them what the Dr. told me and they both start crying. As we a impatiently wait for the nurse to call me back to see James I'm turning around every time I hear the door swing open and finally a nurse walks out and calls my name. I quickly get up and follow the nurse to the back and on the way I ask her if the doctor has come to talk to James and she tells me no, that he is just waking up and that he is still groggy from the anesthesia. Listen, my mind was going crazy- James has NO idea what I am about to tell him, NO idea. So I finally get to him and he is all bundled up and is very out of it. I ask him how he is feeling and he asks me if they did the TESA and as the nurses giggle they give me the instructions on the aftercare and what medicine he is getting and then they give us a moment of privacy to get him dressed and talk to him. I sit down and ask him if he is thirsty and he tells me yes, so I get him some water with a straw and he sips it and Im here just impatiently waiting for him to not be completely out of it and finally I can not take it, I get up and grab his hand and try to get him to focus on me and I tell him that they found something and they are going to freeze it for us. That image on his face will forever be burned into my head. He litterally started to cry and kept asking me over and over again if they really found something, I kept replying yes love they did, they really did. I finally get him dressed and call for the nurse and they get him a wheelchair. Let me tell you that my husband loves to ride around in wheelchairs, he is a skateboarder, he used to ride dirt bikes- needless to say he is an action sports kind of guy. So it wasn't surprising when he tried to ride a wheely when we were going down the the truck haha. So after the two week recovery he was back to normal and we knew that it was just about waiting until after we go married to start all of this. So I will end here and post more tomorrow.

[mybarrenbeloved-blog]

Where do I begin? Well I guess I can start with introductions. My name is Raina, I am 25 and I am a newly wed. I’ll start by saying that this blog is simply for me to express and share my story.

Now that you know that I will begin to share my story, but let me explain this is a work in progress and I really should have started this a few years ago, however so much has happened in the past 7 months that I decided now of all times to tell you. I will start off by saying that I am happy married to my husband for the past 6.5 months. James and I have been together for over 6.5 years, for those 6.5 years we’ve known that we are unable to conceive children for over 5 years, probably more. Now out of those 5 years he have seen 3 different Urologist and  I have seen 1 Reproductive specialist. It’s has not been a constant struggle with one doctor for a long period of time, but more like a slow discovery of what is going on. I for one have no problems conceiving a child, not that Ive ever been pregnant, but I have had normal periods my whole life plus Ive been looked at by a OBYGN and my current Reproductive Specialist. Sadly it is my husband who has the issue and boy when we found out it was truly devastating, more so for him because lets face it, who wants to be told that you have a 0 sperm count, yes I said zero. He has had multiple seaman analysis over the past few years and sadly his little men were missing. Honestly I want to tell you that whenever we first started “talking” back in March of 09′ he told me about a problem he had when he was younger and for his sake I won’t go into detail, but lets just say it wasn’t anything he did to himself, it was natural, it was how is body was made. Thankfully at the age of 9 he realized it one night and he had it fixed. Now I’m sure by now you can determine what it could be, but like i said I’m not going into detail. So back in 3/09 he told me this and I knew there was a possibility, but I didn’t have kids of the brain being only 19. It wasn’t until about a year and a half later that I suspected something was up. I’ve always been safe, never took birth control since I hate it with a passion, but I’ve always used condoms or obviously since condoms are a bit uncomfortable I checked my calendar to make sure I wasn’t ovulating. It wasn’t until April of 2010 that I noticed that we have had some close calls, I mean I know he (excuse my language) pulled out but I know that it only takes a little to conceive. So after a few more mishaps I talked it over with him and we decided to talk to his mom about it and possibly get a test done or two, I mean it wouldn’t hurt right? His mom agreed and we made an appointment with his doctor. This doctor was actually the one who preformed his surgery back int he day and he did blood tests along with a seaman analysis. After two weeks, yes TWO weeks, they called and said that all of his blood results came back normal, FSH, testosterone, ect, but he seaman analysis came back with 0, not a low, not a few, ZERO. We were devastated I mean what do I say? How can I comfort him? What are we going to do? Well his doctor referred him to another Urologist at Tulane Hospital in NOLA, well same tests were done and same results. So let me explain that now it is closer to winter now because we had to wait until it got closer to the end of the year because his health insurance was closer to the deductible and now his doctor is telling us that it could be a blockage due to scar tissue, so he says that there is a procedure he can do that shoots dye and can see it there was any kind of blockage, so we agree and set up a follow up appointment for the procedure. I remember the nurse at the desk saying that the procedure cost $5000, so we are like woah what the heck well okay we will get the money together somehow. Well no problem getting the money, but a few weeks later the nurse called us saying that since this is a fertility issue his insurance wouldn’t cover it, so naturally we were like well how much is it without insurance and she told us it was, wait for it... $10,500!!!!!! What the actually freak man, so sadly we couldn’t do that and for the next year or two we didn’t touch the issue, we knew we couldn’t get pregnant and at the time we weren’t in the position to even have kids, but still there is always that “why us? Why can all these other people, who mind you are not the best parents, have kids? We would be great parents, we would raise an amazing family, but why us?” That thought still floats around our heads from time to time, but ultimately us being believers in Jesus Christ realized that it happens for a reason, but it still lingers there. I will end it here for now, until next time.