Hi Jen,

How has it all gone and what decisions did you end up making?

My husband and I have been through the same process. After the azoospermia (no sperm) diagnosis from his semen samples, my husband had the microTESE surgery last year. They told us from the start that our odds of finding any sperm were poor (less than 20%). I did a stimulated IVF cycle and had eggs retrieved at the same time so that if they found a lame sperm or two they would have eggs available to fertilise with ICSI straight away. The microTESE was unsuccessful and they froze my 20 retrieved eggs. Then our real pain began! My husband was utterly broken… and still is 15 months on. He too, really wanted to have children but struggled with the idea of donor sperm. After much agony, ruling out adoption, and me admitting how painful it would be to not have children at all, we decided to do IVF with donor sperm. We have had a lot of counselling and taken our time to get to this point. We put our names on the waitlist at our clinic as soon as donors became a possibility because the list was six months long. I also spoke to other clinics in Sydney – one had no waitlist at all (imports sperm from America) while others require that you BYO donor (which wasn’t an option for us). We stayed and waited at our original clinic because their program seemed good and we trusted them. We have just started IVF using an anonymous donor. Even now, my husband is finding the idea of me pregnant with another man’s sperm very tough. He has really struggled to be involved in the IVF process but will hopefully find things easier when we are able to talk about a baby rather than eggs, sperms and embryos. I have been finding the IVF cycle quite difficult too because I have been doing most of it on my own and my husband has struggled to even deal with the good news along the way. My little joys and successes seem to exacerbate his sadness and make him dwell on his own infertility. We are in the two week wait after our first embryo transfer and I am scheduled for a pregnancy test on Friday 13th. I hope we, and you, have happy times ahead! I would be happy to chat with you anytime if you want to compare notes or vent.

Best wishes!! I hope things work out for you guys whatever you decide! xx