HELP!!! Concerns about stored sperm

Hi everyone,

Got a question about the procedure for storing sperm - hoping someone can help...

I got a call from my SD today. He has had all sorts of difficulty getting an appointment for the clinic, between that and day to day other life issues its taken about 4 months for him to get in. We are out west and he is in the city, so it was easier for him to use the city location.

Anyway he turned up with a sample at the appointed time. Our FS had told him to tell this clinic to freeze the sample. When he got there he found out that the city clinic did not have a freezing facility. Firstly they advised him to go to another clinic a number of suburbs away. Very firmly he pointed out the difficulties he had getting to this particular clinic. In the end the clinic couriered the sperm over to the other facility. Apparently it was stored ok.

Now I am really concerned for the following reasons, and I hope someone out there can help:

1. There has been no test on the sperm to see its mobility nor sperm count. Do they test this before freezing?

2. My SD did the sample at home. This means that it was sitting there for at least 30 - 45 minutes. Will this effect how many 'good' sperm would have been frozen?

3. I thought that the sperm had to go through a quarantine process. My DH said today - how can it be quarantined as it has been frozen at this particular point and will not change/mutate? I'm now lost.

I obviously need to follow this up - do I ring our clinic and talk to reception? One of the nurses? Or go straight to our FS?

I really don't want to change clinics but this is the second time our FS has given information that is not clear and with this and the IVF counsellor I don't get on with I'm getting a little concerned.

I'm also ticked that I didn't follow this through myself - but I felt I would be too interfering if I double checked what had to happen. I felt it was between the FS and my donor. Now I'm annoyed. I'm really hoping my SD doesn't have to do this again in the short term as I didn't realise how stressful it was for him.

Any advice greatly received!!

Ok, maybe this was one of the hard ones that very few can answer, and those people are busy....

We went and saw our FS today. Apparently there was a miscommunication between our SD and FS. The first sample was used for a sperm wash, and the count and mobility was taken. Our SD still has to do another 3 samples so that they can be stored to be used by us.

My DH and I are vastly relieved. I'm glad someone cancelled so we could sort this out today.

Take care!

When I was reading your first post - I was going to say that they would usually do a trial wash first before they would take a sample for freezing - but seems you already know that! Hope it all turns out well and you have success soon - Good Luck with it!

Hi Keen,

Thanks for getting back to me. Obviously I panicked a bit when SD told me they'd frozen the sperm without testing it! At least now I'll know what the procedure is in future!! These steep learning curves are slippery little suckers!!! :doh: