no. of straws of sperm?

[Babybaby321]

hello, I’m about to try icsi and I’m using donated sperm from EsB or cryos. I appreciate it might be like asking how long is a piece of string but how many straws should I purchase ? Happy to hear your thoughts. Best wishes

[Kitkat10]

hi,

I purchased 7:

Used 3 in the cycles which led to my son.

Just used 2 more in a quest for a sibling

Have 2 still at the ESB stored, not shipped to the UK yet.

My donor didn’t have many straws left after my son was born so I was anxious for a sibling genetic link and bought 4 more, but really wouldn’t matter if 2 siblings had different donors.

For each donor you also pay a £500 family fee to ensure that each donor can contribute to a set maximum number of families (10 I think).

From memory, I think the clinic advised 2-3 straws to start with.

I had a good experience with the ESB. Check if this is still the case, but if you purchase them and don’t need to ship them, they refund 50% cost of the straws if you return them.

Good luck xx

[Eggfreezer2015]

Hi, I am a solo mum and know I just want one child. So I purchased 1 straw. The first one was from London sperm bank, which resulted in a BFN and no embryos to freeze. I then wanted to try a different donor in case it was more compatible. I then bought a straw from the ESB which resulted in a BFP. So I guess it all depends on whether you also want siblings? Whether you want to try different donors… hope that helps. Good luck x

[Twiglet2]

We tend to buy 3-4 at a time. We only actually needed one to have our son but we’ve now gone through another 7 from the same donor trying for a sibling (luckily he had some more and we could purchase as a sibling only but we might not have) it’s saved a bit of money too with delivery and pregnancy slot to buy more than one at a time xx

[LSandJ]

I just purchased one. It resulted in 8 embryos (we were v lucky), so assumed that would be enough for a one, and later a sibling. We didn't get any babies from those 8 (although we do have 2 embryos left in our old clinic).

We then moved clinics and got a new donor. Again we just purchased one. We made 11 embryos and used 4, curre tly pregnant with twins. Hopefully all is successful and we won't need any more embryos or straws.

We were v lucky though and had no issues with amh or egg quality. So it depends if you know about those factors yet. If you know you'll likely get a lower number of embryos, then you may need more straws!! For us we thought we'd go back and purchase more later if needed. HOWEVER, I have seen people wish to do this and it no longer be available.

But for us the change in donor was something we were glad to change, just so we could rule out any issues there (despite doctors saying incompatibility was unlikely and I'm pretty sure he'd had proven fertility)! But even so...!