$20,000.00 plus and no pregnancy

[Quadlover]

Two attemps at IVF and no pregnancy. Needless to say my SO is emotionally distraught over this. She is a healthy vibrant girl and we are ready to start a family. However she does not want to go through this painful procedure again.

I am looking for another 'genetic' option. A sperm donor and artificial insemination is our final option.

I want to know if Testicular Sperm Extraction and Artificial Insemination will work?

QL

[Wise Young]

QL,

What was the cause of the IVF failure? I assume that they were unable to get fertilization of the eggs.

There are many causes of fertilization failure. Some of the causes of fertilization failure related to sperm penetration into the egg can be circumvented by injection of sperm into the cells, i.e. intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). There are some concerns with this method (see Schoolcraft - ICSI: Should It Be Routine in Human In Vitro Fertilization) and at least one study suggests that ICSI is less successful in people with a history of failed or poor IVF. The pregnancy and implantation rate of people with a history of idiopathic fertilization failure is 20% and 6% respectively, compared to 47% and 22% of people who do not have such a history. On the other hand, ICSI reduces fertilization failure and provides 3 times as many embryos on average (see article ). What you need to know at this point is the quality of the sperm and egg (http://haveababy.com/infert/undiagnosed.asp). Medscape has an article that directly addresses the question of what one should do if IVF failure occurs.

Usually artificial insemination is tried before IVF. I don't think that it is more likely to be effective than IVF. I can understand, however, your interest in this approach since it is less traumatic and cheaper than the IVF approach.

Did they get the sperm by electroejaculation or electrovibration? In general, both of these methods may yield ejaculate with a high proportion of low-quality sperm and the pregnancy rate has been reported to be as low as 20%. Testicular sperm extraction may help increase the fertilization rate in IVF but ICSI circumvents most of the problems associated with poor quality sperm.

Wise.

[Quadlover]

Hello Wise,
Sorry I was so vague in my post. Fertilization gave us 4 healthy embryos and they were implanted in pairs, both times a failure.

We decide to do the Testiculer Sperm Extraction (electrovibration was a problem, and electroejaculation resulted in low-quality sperm). The extracted sperm was healthy so the Doctor saw no need for ICSI. A total of 12 eggs were collected but as I said only 4 resulted in healthy embryos.

The Testiculer Sperm Extraction procedure was fast and simple. I felt as if I had been kicked in the gonads afterwards, but the discomfort only lasted a couple of days.

So my question, (and I will be posing this to my Doc as soon as I can) why can't we just extract the sperm and use it to artificially inseminate my SO? Seems simple enough to me.

Thank you for your input.

QL

My husband and I went through 3 failed IVF cycles, #1 I hyperstuimulated and got poor egg quality, #2 pg with twins (one miscarried one ectopic), #3 few embryos due to lab error. And then I took almost a year off. I am still "on break" but I am starting to get more comfortabnle and positive about doing ano0ther cycle. From what I know doing an extraction mandates ICSI. So far we have gotten by with EEjs but may have to do an extraction this time.

Anyways, she may need some time to heal. Its one of the most painful things to go through. If she is interested in talking to someone in her situtation, my AOL ID and email is in my bio.

MoodyMcMoody

[Wise Young]

QL,

Sorry that I misunderstood. I think that you are correct in your assessment of the situation. If you are getting good sperm quality and they fertilized the eggs in vitro without difficulty, one should expect that the sperm will work as well in an artificial insemination situation. It is certainly less expensive and less uncomfortable for your significant other than another attempt at in vitro fertilization. It is a reasonable option.

When I went through the IVF literature, I was struck by the low success pregnancy rate with IVF. In most cases, it was less than 50%. Just on the basis of statistics alone, two failed attempts does not mean that there is anything wrong. As Moody describes, there are so many factors that may reduce the success rate. My heart goes out to people who are using IVF and every IVF baby should understand how much their parents wanted and love them.

Wise.

[mk99]

Failing an IVF cycle is brutal. I know cause we failed the first one too.

In my case the problem was my sperm. For IVF cycle #2, we had 2 backups.

1 -> my frozen sperm from electroejaculation
2 -> frozen donor sperm

Fortunately, they did TESE (or maybe PESE?) procedure on me at the same time as my wife's eggs were being retrieved. We got good sperm, 11 eggs and I think 4 good looking fertilized embryos. Implanted 2 and ended up with twins. (1 boy & 1 girl)

I am hoping I can somehow use the other 2 embryos to fix my cord. Otherwise we will donate them to science.

Try again! (if you can) It's a lot of money and emotionally/psychologically & physically brutal but sometimes it takes a few tries!