Sperm donor advice

[TeacherD]

Hello everyone,

As some of you may know from.my previous posts, we've just had our 2nd egg collection. It was successful to the point that we managed to get one embryo to a 2ab blastocyst stage and it has been frozen. I was a little disappointed as we were told after egg collection that 14 eggs had been collected. When our embryologist called the following day, only 3 had fertilised and she mentioned egg quality (lots of very small/immature eggs) and sperm morphology. My egg quality was good in my previous collection and the only reason I have for the decline in quality this time is that our doses of gonal f were increased quite rapidly, in my opinion, during stims. I fear that the follicles were stimulated massively but the eggs didn't get the chance to catch up before retrieval. Please feel free to offer other explanations if anyone else has been through similar.

My real question is about the sperm. We used a sperm donor from CryosInternational as my partner is infertile. We followed all the advice given by the embryologist when choosing a donor and spent little under £4k to get 2 vials of sperm. The embryologist didn't mention any issues with the first vial but with this collection, she stated that the morphology of the sperm had been a problem and that rather than burrowing into the egg, the sperm cells attached to the outer membrane and seemed unable to progress further because of their shape. This happened with a large number of our eggs. Has anyone else had issues similar to this? Is this something we should report to the sperm bank?

Apologies for the very long post but I'm a sucker for over-sharing 🙈

[Axel131]

Hey Kdev, sorry you didn't have a better outcome from all the eggs. I would definitely be going back to the sperm bank as there should be no issues with donor sperm because of all the rigorous testing it goes through, that's why it's so expensive. Have a another chat with the embryologist so you know exactly what the problem was with it and curious also to get their opinion too as they deal with these things every day. I've also used donor sperm as I'm single from a different bank and it was one thing that I thought I didn't have to think of as I presumed the quality was a guarantee! I would be thinking that if that straw was not of good quality then it should be automatically replaced with another one free of charge. I hope you get some answers xx

[TeacherD in reply to Axel131]

Thank you for replying Axel131! I will definitely get more feedback from the embryologist and follow up on this more. Out of curiosity, what sperm bank did you use? I found Cryos very hard to deal with but then had some issues with our clinic returning paperwork to them too so those issues may not be entirely their fault!

[Axel131 in reply to TeacherD]

I've used the European Sperm Bank and they've been good to deal with. So for example, I was lucky enough to conceive with my first IUI but sadly my son didn't survive as he had genetic issues. At the time, I didn't know the cause (it turned out to be me, as in something I carry which was a complete surprise but that wasn't discovered for a couple of years) so there was a lot of back and forth with them in case there was an issue with the sperm. I had 4 straws remaining and they swapped them out no problem for another donor. Since then, I've need a genetic probe built to do PGT-M testing which needed donor DNA and more back and forth with them and they were obliging. In saying that now this year, the communication has taken a bit longer and I'm still waiting for a reply to an email I sent to them last week which is unusual. They could just be sick of me at this stage!! It's not great that Cryos have been a bit hard to deal with when you're paying so much. I tried to think of them as I would any other retailer with a product that wasn't quite up to scratch, it takes the emotion out of it a bit because all of this fertility stuff is so hard to go through when there's hurdles at every stage.

[Axel131 in reply to Axel131]

I also think you might be right with your thinking on the increasing dose of stims. There's been more research coming out suggesting that higher stims is not good for egg quality and I wonder if I go again if I might try a milder protocol. It is a gamble because you'll get less eggs but if they're better quality then that's what you want. For me my maturity rate was always ok but I always used a double trigger as standard. There is a lot they can do protocol wise to try and get the eggs to maturity but as I always say, IVF is the most expensive trial and error until you find out what suits your body!

[TeacherD]

I am so sorry for the loss of your baby boy. My heart hurts for you. Thank you for sharing such a personal journey.

It is such a trial and error and we're only really at the beginning of our journey. It's been a rollercoaster already with our first pregnancy resulting in an early loss. I've learnt that I really need to feel much better in myself though. In hindsight I think I should have waited a month or two before jumping back on the stims.

The research out there is so vast and sometimes conflicting, it's so hard to figure it all out but I definitely think there's a link. I'm a huge believer in holistic therapies and in trying more natural routes when it comes to my health and wellbeing so this has been such a minefield for me. I'm sure it is for anyone entering the journey however!

How do you cope with it all? I really like the idea of looking at the sperm bank as a retailer. I will be doing that when I'm contacting them this week. I definitely need to try to remove the emotion from it all.