Husband has drinking problem causing MFI, what would you do?

[Anonymous]

My husband and I are having difficulty conceiving - all of my tests are normal, and he has poor morph and poor motility. He does drink quite a bit and my RE told me that drinking is probably the cause of his male factor problems.

We are both in our mid-thirties and have been together since college. As our incomes increased, he started buying and consuming more alcohol - high-end beer and whiskey/scotch. Over the years things progressed from a couple of drinks after work to basically not being able to stop drinking once he starts. If he buys a 6 pack, he drinks it all in one night. If he buys a bottle of whiskey, it's gone in 2-3 days. If he goes to a work event with an open bar, he'll often get very drunk. Two weeks ago he went to a work event and came home drunk, having left his jacket with our car keys in it at the bar, and we had to spend all weekend running around trying to get the keys replaced. This was during the middle of our first IVF cycle and I was already stressed enough, and felt pissed that I have to do IVF to get pregnant with his sperm and he's still getting drunk and getting into trouble.

He is a great guy aside from these problems - has a great job, very hard-working, and the only point of stress in our relationship is his drinking. I wouldn't have married him if he'd been an alcoholic when I met him, but it's crept up on us. I do feel badly for him because I know that it's an addiction and he's not acting rationally. But I'm also at the end of my rope. I've been trying to encourage him to reduce alcohol consumption during our medicated cycles, but he begs to drink (and gets drunk) 1-2 days a week. So today he's begging to go to the store to buy beer, and I'm like "Can you please be on my team here? Can you please not drink for the next two weeks until I ovulate again?" And now he's off pouting in the basement because I'm not "allowing" him to drink. I'm not sure if getting drunk 1-2 times a week is enough to cause MFI, but I'm just frustrated because I'm doing so much to try to get pregnant (not drinking alcohol myself, doing medicated cycles, constant monitoring appointments) and he can't give up this one thing.

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas of how to encourage him to drink less or not at all. After he got so drunk at the work event a couple of weeks ago, he sent me an email with a vow to never drink again. That lasted about a week. He can go most of the work week without drinking, but if it's the weekend, he starts pouting about not having booze, and it kind of ruins my weekend to have to deal with him being such a brat. I don't like policing his intake. I want to just enforce a rule of no more drinking period, but I keep caving and letting him buy just one more six pack. I do think he'll be a good dad - I think a lot of his drinking now is tied to boredom, he really has no hobbies or healthy outlets for stress. His own dad was a very good dad and didn't have any problems with alcohol. Does anyone have any experience with getting someone to drink less or stop drinking? Do you think I should enforce a no-alcohol policy? Sorry that this is only tangentially related to infertility, please let me know if there's a better board to post this on. Thanks in advance for any advice.

[Anonymous]

What are your plans for when he does this kind of drinking when you have a newborn?
I'm wondering if the fertility treatments should take a backseat to him getting a handle on his alcoholism.

[Anonymous]

When we were doing IVF, DH didn't drink when I couldn't.

I don't know how to say this without causing offense, but it seems important to address the alcoholism before you try to have a baby.

[Anonymous]

This is not a time to try to have a baby, it's a time for your husband to get help (or leave). Please don't bring a child into a family with an alcoholic

[Anonymous]

That is not a small problem that your dealing with there Op.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the PP. Your biggest problem is that you are married to an alcoholic and you should not knowingly bring a baby into that type situation. It so isn't fair to the child/children you hope to have. I have a friend who had a child in a situation similar to yours and they ended up getting divorced because the addiction got worse over time. Her poor child has to deal with an irresponsible father for the rest of her life and it is taking a toll.

Please stop the treatments and go to AlAnon to get the support you need.

[Anonymous]

OP, you can't control his drinking. That's a harsh truth but that's what you've got. I suggest trying Al-Anon meetings. Even if you do get pregnant, this problem won't go away and Al-Anon can give you support.

[Anonymous]

You seriously need to put baby making aside until your husband quits drinking.

[Anonymous]

The fact that he can't control his drinking long enough to improve his own fertility is....heartbreaking. Please don't have a baby with this man, he is not ready to be a dad.

[Anonymous]

Do not have a child with a pouting alcoholic. What will you do when you have to go out of town and your DH is in charge without you? Will he be able to take care of a child while he is drunk? What if you child get hurts (or dies) while in his care because he was so drunk?

If you have a child with him, at least be honest with yourself that you are entering a life of single motherhood.

You DH has a serious problem that will only get worse. Even if he gets help today and gets into a program (there are many, not just AA. Try looking into SMART recovery), it takes at least a year of no drinking to get your brain functioning again. He will have no extra mental energy to take care of the needs of a child, let alone a newborn infant.

He needs to be sober (and seeking help, program, therapist) for at least a year before you can try to get pregnant. And even then it's a struggle. My DH is in recovery for several years, he wants to be sober, and he still slips up.

If you are worried about your age, do a freeze all cycle. Have all your embryos frozen. Then once your DH gets help and you've waited a year, then you can do a FET.

[Anonymous]

Oh, yeah--I forgot.

You can't make you DH quit drinking or get help. All you can do is set your expectations and what you are going to do.

Please get into Al-non for yourself, so you can set some healthy boundaries and create a plan, in case you have to leave him because he chooses alcohol over you and a baby.

[Anonymous]

Dead serious question: do you see this problem gettung better when you are pregnant? Have a newborn? A small child?
Are you prepared to never drink so that there will always be someone to drive your child to the ER in the event of an emergency.
Stop worrying about getting pregnant and get your DH some help.

[Anonymous]

Your baby doesn't need an alcoholic father.

Divorce him and find another, have a child on your own, or do not have children with him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You seriously need to put baby making aside until your husband quits drinking.

This

[Anonymous]

OP here. I totally understand all this advice and would say the same thing if I weren't living in the situation. I guess I wasn't too bothered by the behavior and lived with it for years because when he gets drunk, he just goes to bed early - he isn't loud or mean or even visibly drunk. I really wouldn't even know he was drunk except that I saw him drink 6 beers and then go to bed at 9 p.m. I definitely enjoy drinking myself, but I can stop whenever I want, and it seems to be difficult for him to stop if there's still alcohol in the house. He is great around our nieces and nephews (way better with kids than I am), never gets drunk at family events, etc. The only times he seems to have trouble are when he's bored on the weekend or when he's at a work event (he works in finance, in an all-male environment, and I believe that drinking heavily is encouraged by the guys that he works with).

I really do not want to get divorced. We are happy together (aside from this issue) and I can't imagine separating all of our assets, dating again, etc. No one knows that he has a problem (not even our families), and we appear to be a great couple from the outside. But this drinking issue has become a problem now that we're trying to conceive. I honestly think he would be a wonderful parent and I don't think he would get drunk around our kids. Maybe this is wishful thinking though.

Is there a way to get him to seek help if he doesn't think he has a problem? I think if you asked him, he would say that he works a stressful job and just wants to kick back with a 6 pack on Saturday night. He'd say that I'm jumping to do huge medical interventions like IVF without giving the TTC process enough time. He would say (and has said many times) that he can't wait to have kids and he is trying his best to support me during this journey. He would probably say that I'm a controlling perfectionist who has decided to blame his drinking for our failure to conceive. To his credit, he won't buy alcohol without my permission, so I do think that I could successfully keep him from drinking entirely. I'm just having trouble getting through the "withdrawal" phase, where he's asking for a 6-pack and pouting when I say no. I lose my resolve pretty quickly and say "okay, just one bottle of wine," and then we're back to him going through a 6 pack every Saturday, and me yelling about how I'm doing all this stuff to get pregnant and he's not helping.

Ugh. I know I sound like I'm in total denial here. It's just a hard situation when I don't want to divorce him because we have a wonderful life aside from this, he doesn't want to get help (and I'm not certain he's at the point where he truly needs help), and we both want to have kids. Thanks for listening and for all of the advice.