Sperm sample not suitable for IVF - ICSI needed

[Sunshine_4]

Hi everyone, I just had my first egg retrieval today. On the way home we received a phone call to say that my husbands sperm was not suitable for IVF and they would be doing ICSI instead. This came as a shock as previous sperm tests have showed only slight reduced motility. And everything else perfect. Has anyone had this happen to them before?

[Tugsgirl]

Yes. For my first cycle we had ivf but for my second we had icsi. Long story short, we now have a 16 week old daughter xx

[Gmhshop]

Yes this happened to us too - my partners 2 previous samples were fine. We ended up making lots of good embryos doing ICSI so good luck! Xx

[Cinderella5]

Try not to worry too much! Some clinics even prefer to use ICSI over IVF to take away the uncertainty that the sperm may not swim to the eggs for fertilisation which can only be a good thing.xx

[Sunshine_4]

Thank you all, we had a call this morning to say that of the 6 eggs collected all of them were mature but only 2 have fertilised. They have provisionally booked me in for a 3 day transfer. I don’t know how I feel, grateful that we got 2 fertilised, shocked that the sperm count was low. Could that be due to stress and pressure on the day? I’m crying a lot today as I don’t know how I feel xx

[SharlyWarly in reply to Sunshine_4]

Don't worry, my partner's sperm doesn't swim and there are hardly any of them and we always collected far less eggs than I thought we would but we have a lovely 2 year old daughter! No, I don't think it's stress / pressure, just bad luck. 2 fertilised is fine, after all they might both stick! Everyone who does IVF experiences stress and there are thousands of IVF babies out there in the world x