Low Sperm Counts

Hi Katie,

Sorry to hear about your DH's SA results...

I'm sure ladies with a BMI of over 35 have done IVF privately but for it to be publically funded your BMI needs to be a BMI of 32 or under.
I'm sure lots of ladies will come forward with info/websites for you, I googled lots when we started TTC as we already knew there'd be issues... there's heaps of info out there!

Thanks Wishin41!
We will be going private with IVF as it will take me years to qualify.
I am loosing weight now because I dont want to under go IVF at my current size - but I wont be in the ideal range.

Thanks Bx.
It has been a bit rough on DH's ego. He feels like he has let me down because I always wanted a large family, now he his not sure he can give that to me. So I am waiting until the next round of tests before I get him to do anything specific. Just to give him time to digest.

The advice I have read online is so contradictory. Some say you can improve sperm count, others say that you cant. Not sure who to believe.

I am a guy with an extremely low sperm count and with the technology these days with the likes of fertility associates is amazing. The main thing that your guy needs to realise is that they only need 1 sperm. Don't know about the weight thing except for the fact that you cannot get government funding if you are over. My wife and i went through fertility associates in Wellington and the team down there are absolutely amazing. No other way to describe them. A typical sperm count is 20million+, I had 2 tests done that came back at 50,000 ond 100,000. Not even enough for traditional IVF and our only hope was the ICSI process were they Isolate 1 single sperm and manually inject into the egg under microscope. The other thing your guy needs to realise is that a lot of the time it may not even be his fault. Sure a lot of the time alcohol and substance abuse can play a big part of it but there can be a hole lot of other things as well. In my case it was a genetic fault were I just cannot develop enough sperm for fertilise an egg naturally. Our specialist said that it is the way it has always been. Rubbing salt into the wound my ex girlfreind in my late teens had fell pregnant suposedly with me, only to find out that there is no possible way. So yeah, it can hit home but there is so much available out there today that even 3 million is more that enough for conventional IVF. So I guess to answer your question is that we were showed a graph were when they were studying sperm counts with 1 male testing reguarly and the same person had 6 million 1 day followed by a 30million count on the next occasion so it can vary greatly. There is also the tablet out for us guys now as well I think it is called MENEVIT which was not available here when we went through IVF just over 2 years ago. So anything is possible. Good Luck I know what must be going through both of your minds.

My little girl is a Menevit baby My partner was on it for 3 months with the count going from 8Million to 17 million, but still less than 5% motility and morphology, at which point we were in the same boat as you, told we needed IVF, but I was over their maximum BMI, so I focussed on losing weight, while DP researched ways to increase sperm quality... I have PM'd you about it, but in case anyone else is reading, he found a herbal supplement called Herbal Y Extreme for me, the main ingredient being horny goat weed... 7 weeks after the appointment where we'd been told we needed IVF, we found out we had done it all on our own!

We are trying for one more, and hopefully now that we know what can be done to help our odds, it might happen a little sooner this time...