My DH has had a varicocele 'fixed' so I'll try to answer some of your questions for you.
Firstly... what sort of specialist would deal with male infertility? My gyn apparently mentioned to DH the possibility of a testicular varicocele which could be causing the problem and can be corrected surgically. But what sort of doctor would fix that?
My DH had to see a urologist & have an x-ray (it's not actually an x-ray but similar) to confirm that he had the varicocele. Then we went to a radiologist who did the embolisation. You can have surgery to fix it too and the urologist would perform that.
Is there a type of specialist that could deal with both his problem and mine? I mean, obviously the gynecologist can do nothing for DH, and someone specialising in problems of the male reproductive system (urologist?) wouldn't be able to do anything for me, but is there someone who can deal with us both, short of going the IVF route?
We saw Ric Porter at IVF Australia who is fantastic! I highly recommend him. He can send you to different people for your different issues, but then advise you on what to do with the results.
To do with intercourse timing... I know they say that every second day is best for TTC, but why? With a bad sperm count should we be BDing more often or less often? I thought it would be more often, but when I mentioned this to DH he said it made no sense... that if a male with good sperm needed two days to recharge, then a bloke with bad sperm would need even longer. I thought it may have something to do with getting a decent number of sperm inside... that if a normal healthy male will deposit over 20 million each time, then we need to BD 4 times to get that as many as another couple would get once... If that makes sense? Does anyone know which of us is correct?
I was told with our triple defect SA results to BD every 2nd day. In fact even with improved results Dr Porter said every 2nd day is enough. I'm not sure on what's right, as everyone seems to have a different opinion...
How many clomid cycles will someone generally be allowed to do? I'm not ovulating without the clomid, if clomid works and I ovulate, great... but with DH's SA and the news that it will take us longer... will I be allowed to have enough clomid cycles to have "longer"?
Not sure, sorry.
I'm wondering whether it would be worth us trying to continue with natural conception (as natural as clomid, acupuncture and everything else can leave it), or just go the whole IUI/IVF thing straight off... really tough decisions to make and I don't know the first place to look for the answers!
Dr Porter could help you with that - he is very good! He didn't push us into IVF straight away - he recommended we have the embolisation done and the results are so good that he's now recommended we try naturally for a while... I'm very impressed with him! He's in Sydney too.
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