Reply to IVF#1 at 40, 29 eggs fertilized! Any insight or similar experiences?

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[quote=Anonymous]OP here - thanks for the many replies and kind wishes.  I am cautiously optimistic but also trying to temper my expectations; I know that things can go wrong at any stage.  I'm also a bit worried that it's too many eggs, and maybe they got fried in the process.  I met my husband (who has MFI) five years ago, but the fact that I was never pregnant before that gives me pause.  (I wasn't trying and was being careful, but still...)  I also have some immune issues (sub-clinical hypothyroid & psoriasis) so I'm worried that implantation could be a problem.  But thanks again for all the advice, especially the cautionary stuff...

To the poster who asked about my husband's rise in motility.  His first SA showed zero motility.  We did another SA 6 weeks later and it was essentially the same: 2% motility.  I was devastated and when we had our initial consultation at SG our doctor said that we needed to re-test and that if the results were the same, he wouldn't be able to work with it, even with ICSI; my husband would have to do TESE/MESE, etc, to retrieve sperm.  My husband's 3rd SA was 3 months after the first one and his motility was 69%!  (Though the count was still low.)  While we did use fresh sperm for our IVF, I had him freeze a backup sample, just in case, and this time the motility wasn't as great - forget the exact numbers, but somewhere in the 30s - but still good enough for ICSI.

Here's what I think made the difference.  My OBGYN told me that I had chlamydia antibodies in the fall.  I had had this false confidence that I was fine on that front; I was dismayed to discover that regular pap smears are not good at detecting chlamydia.  I was horrified that my husband and I had been passing this back and forth for 4+ years.  I was worried that I might have fallopian tube scarring as a result, but luckily my HSG was clear.  I sent my husband to our GP for a full physical and STD check; he also had chlamydia antibodies of course.  I asked our GP for a course of antibiotics so we could both wipe this out (and stop passing it back and forth)!  I thought the chlamydia might have affected my husband's fertility, and was hoping that the antibiotic might make a difference, but I was shocked when we saw so much improvement.  I then did some research and discovered a study (done by Canalejo University Hospital, La Coruna, Spain) that showed that antibiotic treatment could reverse the damage chlamydia does to a man's fertility.  After much hunting I found the actual study in a medical journal and it was very compelling; I had to request the document through my university library's databases and the link they sent me expired after two weeks, so unfortunately I don't still have electronic copy of article (though I printed it out somewhere!).  If you look online you can find articles that mention the study (though the actual study is a much better read!):

"They analyzed the sperms of 143 men - they were infected with Chlamydia and another urinary tract infection and had not managed to father children. They found that the degree of DNA fragmentation in these men's sperm was three times higher than in healthy men's. As well as having a low sperm count, they had a higher number of sperms with defective shapes. They also found that infected men's sperm had poor motility (they did not swim well).
After treating 95 of the infertile men with antibiotics for four months, the researchers found that their sperm DNA fragmentation improved 36% - during this time 13% of them managed to get their partners pregnant. By the end of the treatment period 86% of the couples became pregnant."

The other possibility is that after the first SA I had my husband start taking FertilAid and Motility Boost; he'd been taking them for just about 3 months when he did the 3rd (vastly improved) SA.  Personally, I think it was the antibiotic that did the trick, but the supplements may have also made a modest difference.  After the good SA my husband got lazy about taking his supplements, and his most recent sample wasn't quite as robust, so it's possible that the supplements may have made a difference.  (I don't think they would have boosted him up from zero motility; my guess is that the antibiotic did that heavy lifting, but the supplements may have helped too.)

I hope this helps!

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