# Time to move onto donor sperm?



## mittens (May 3, 2008)

Hi Crystal.

My husband and I are at an extremely difficult decision making stage, whether to use donor sperm. I really need to an embryologists point of view and experience to help me understand how bad our results  are to help us make the decision to proceed with donor sperm.

Here our brief history. 
TTC 4 years. Had all the checks, everything fine. Husband count fluctuates 14 - 60ml, and has high abnormal forms 10 -27%(normal). He has had all tests and there are no chromosome, karotype, dna or antibody problems. In both icsi attempts they found plenty of normal looking sperm to use. 

First icsi (long protocol) I produced 11 eggs. 10 were mature. We got zero fertilization. 
Second icsi (short protocol,different drugs, different clinic) 16 eggs, 11 mature. 3 very faint fertilization, 2 definate fertilization, 1 slow growing embryo - 4 cell day 3. BFN.

We have been advised by both clinics to do our next cycle half donor, half dh. They are basing this on the fact that I responded well, the eggs looked fine, that I have been pregnant before with different partner (10 years ago), and my dh's high abnormal forms.

To get my head around this advice it would really be helpful to put our case in the context of what normally happens with icsi. Is there a percentage rate you would expect for fertilisation? Do most mature looking eggs fertilise using icsi? How rare is our case? Have you seen this before?

It is so natural for us to play down our results and convince ourselves that there is nothing wrong, (because we so desperately dont want there to be), but we cant really tell they are unless we compare ourselves to what normally happens.

Thankyou for your help, your comments will be greatly recieved.

Mittensx


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## CrystalW (Jul 25, 2007)

mittens said:


> Hi Crystal.
> 
> My husband and I are at an extremely difficult decision making stage, whether to use donor sperm. I really need to an embryologists point of view and experience to help me understand how bad our results are to help us make the decision to proceed with donor sperm.
> 
> ...


Hello Mittens,

It is difficult to talk in terms of `averages` in IVF, as every case is slightly different but with ICSI with eggs that look ok and normal-looking sperm we would usually expect to see 70-80% fertilisation.

Your history of no fertilisation with a good number of eggs, and then lower fertilisation with just one dividing is unusual but i have seen it before. It is suggestive there may be an underlying issue but nothing is completely clear cut.

The clinics option of using half donor sperm is a plan i have used for a number of patients. By splitting the same batch of eggs then you can get more of an idea about whether there is a sperm or egg issue. If there is good fertilisation with the donor sperm, compared to your husbands sperm then this would suggest a sperm issue. If there is poor fertilisation for all the eggs, then there may be an egg issue.

The problem is that although all tests may come back ok, which is reassuring in many ways- there may be things that we currently dont know about for which tests dont even exist yet. This is why although everything can look good down the microscope it is by no means the whole story.

Its a brave step to take but it would give you more information. Some people have opted to freeze any embryos created from the donor sperm, even if there is no other embryos available then they can have more time to consider everything and have a FET later.

Best wishes


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