My Secondary Infertility

[art]

Hi all. Have read through a few of the stories on here, especially robbyd and chrisd's threads, and I'd like to thank them for posting their stories.

Here's what may be the start of my own epic thread, perhaps the first of 2011, although obviously I hope it won't last that long...

So, a little about me and my situation. First up, my name's not actually "Art", but is reasonably unusual, so combined with a few details about my wife and so forth which may come out in future, would make it very easy to identify me.  As I want to be very open about things on here and yet preserve my privacy, it's time for a pseudonym!

I'm a man in my early thirties, married to a wonderful wife, almost the same age as me. We've been married for almost ten great years. As a child, I had a case of undescended testes on both sides, and for whatever reason this wasn't picked up until age eleven. It was then dealt with pretty rapidly through surgery.  Before getting married, I had a sperm test, as it was always likely that with that history I might have trouble fathering a child, but the results of that test showed good numbers of sperm in the sample, acceptable motility, normal forms etc. Slightly low volume but otherwise good.

About four and a half years ago we decided that we were ready to try and start a family, my wife came off the pill, and four months later we had the wonderful news that we'd been hoping for, namely that she was pregnant. Nine months later, our daughter arrived, and has brought joy and happiness to us ever since.

We always hoped to have two or three children, but wanted a reasonable gap between them in age, so waited eighteen months before stopping contraception again. However, this time, nothing happened. After almost a year of trying, with my wife temperature charting and religiously logging everything you could think of on fertilityfriend.com we decided to get some investigations. In theory, we knew that "everything worked" but for whatever reason it wasn't working anymore!

My wife has always had quite variable cycles when not on the pill, from 27 up as far as 42 days, which doesn't seem to help, but there's nothing specific that appears to be wrong with her in conception terms. For me, however, sperm tests revealed good volume of semen but low numbers of sperm, and in particular very low numbers of normal forms within those.

Since that initial diagnosis we've tried a few things, and are currently both having acupuncture for fertility, but we've also had a couple of consultations at the local IVF clinic. Unfortunately, at the last one of these (in early December) my sperm count came back with ZERO normal forms! Hopefully this was an aberation and the next test will reveal enough sperm for ICSI at least...

In the last few days, since finding Mensfe, I've read through every single post on this forum, and as far as I can tell I seem to be the only person posting here with what is known as "Secondary Infertility". This is the situation when a couple has been able to conceive once but are unable do so again.

It's very frustrating in many ways. Whilst we are hugely grateful for our daughter, we don't seem to fit into either the group of friends who are now all on their second or third child and keep saying "When are you two going get round to it?" and yet we also don't fit with the people desperately trying anything to get their first and looking at us and saying "You're so lucky to have a child, what do you have to complain about?"!

Anyway, there's the background. We want to give the acupuncture a chance, and also I'm currently working away from home which isn't very compatible with being able to attend IVF sessions, support my wife through the hormone treatments etc. As such, we've arranged the next consult for the end of March and would probably be aiming to start IVF in late April after a couple of weeks holiday.

Hope that our experiences might be useful to someone. I'll keep an eye on the site and post when there's something to add, even if it's just frustration at yet more friends and family seemingly easily adding to their families!

[art]

Just heard from a colleague that his partner's had to have emergency treatment for an ectopic pregnancy. Obviously concerned for them and glad to hear that treatment has been successful, but have to admit that it makes me think "How come other people can even get pregnant if the sperm and egg aren't even in the right place!" 

[chrisd]

Hi Art

Welcome to mensfe, I am sorry to hear about your situation, I know it cant be easy but I personnally have found this site to be of great help in getting things off my chest.

It is good to have a new person here too, I was kind of getting a bit lonely.  Keep us posted and if there is anything I can offer in the way of words or advice then I will do my best.

Chris

[art]

Thanks Chris.

124 views and only one response...but I think that seems pretty typical for this site! 

I wonder if other people's partners are using the "Clearblue Fertility Monitor"? My wonderful wife (I might abbreviate that to MWW in future!) has had one for a few months, having previously tried the temperature charting, mucus checking etc. and I'm a touch sceptical. It usually seems to almost default to giving a few days "Medium" then a "Peak" just when I can't be around for some reason! This month, it's just given about 8 days of "Medium" fertility, but MWW is convinced from the temp, mucus etc. that she ovulated sometime over the weekend...

[art]

And another Medium today.

[robbyb]

"MWW"... Why did I never think of that!?
Welcome to mensfe!

If you've read through all the posts on the site, Art, you'll have seen that the reads:replys ratio has always been terribly poor and has from time to time prompted me or Chris to have a miniature tantrum on the matter.
I hope Chris and I can offer you a little support where the lurkers for whatever reason feel that they can't.

I think you're right; I haven't read any posts from anyone with secondary infertility. I always found it very hard to deal with all of my friends who were getting pregnant.  It must feel terrible for you both to be stuck between both groups of friends.

When we had a couple of miscarriages, we were desperate not to let people know that it happened, primarily because, as sympathetic as people can be, if they know you've got pregnant once they project an expectation/certainty that the next pregnancy will be just a month or two away. We knew that it would be at least four months after a miscarriage that we would even have a shot at another.

My point is, I can completely sympathise with you. The expectation from all the people who know that you have a daughter and are a good dad who is enjoying his role is that you'll want to give her a sister or a brother in the near future. And people can be remarkably ignorant.
The number of people we spoke to who would just come right on out and say it! "You'd better got on with it!" "time won't wait for you, you know!" like we didn't know that and hadn't spent the last two years trying!

So the weight of expectation on you must be even more than it ever w on us because people can see that you've done it once already and, I suppose naturally, presume that there's nothing to stop you getting on with it again.

I feel really positive both for the good of the site and for me and Chris (mostly Chris.  I've been sh1te at keeping posted since my twins came along - I have an excuse! One's not been well.) that you've come here to share your story, Art. The site (Again: basically I mean Chris!) has been a really helpful place for me to safely vent off steam and even get some support from people of the same gender who really get where I'm coming from.

Keep us posted. I'm always interested, and if anything I can say is of any help at all I'll be around.*

Good luck

Rob

*albeit quite tardy.  :-)

[art]

Thanks for the welcome Robby. It's nice to actually hear from one of the people reading my thoughts, but in some ways, perhaps I can be more useful to those who, for whatever reason, don't want to post. Maybe some of those are people in my situation who don't want to put anything on here for fear of offending people who don't seem to be able to have a child at all, but can get something from my thoughts and comments (and from the responses of yourself, Chris and anyone else who may join in in future).

It certainly is annoying to have people commenting that "shouldn't you get on with having a little brother or sister for her?" and has driven MWW to tears afterwards on more than one occasion.

Cheers,

Art

PS - Sorry to hear that one of your twins has been ill, Rob - hope she's okay now? Having kids certainly puts you through the emotional grinder as well, as you're just so worried whenever they're unwell. I always feel like saying "Just give me what she's got and take it away from her! I'll take it twice as unpleasant if it will help her!". Especially when they're so young they can't talk and can't understand why they feel horrible.

[art]

Another month with nothing happening naturally. MWW a bit depressed about it yesterday, as the gap to our first daughter is now larger than between MWW and her sister, which she had always felt was more than she wanted for our kids.

Anyway, appointment at the clinic a week today, for a sperm test and then a conversation about whether we're ready to start IVF, exactly what type and when...

Hoping that the sperm test shows that last time's "zero normal forms" was an aberration!

[art]

Well, all feeling a bit more positive today. 

Had another sperm count today, and got back some much better results. Decent volume, borderline numbers per ml, but up to 39% motile and 5% normal forms. Given that last time I had 0% normal forms, this feels like a really big step forwards.

Also discussed next steps, and we're planning to start IVF, almost certainly ICSI, starting around June/July depending on cycles etc. MWW and I both think that it feels good to have made the decision, even if we know there's still a very long way to go even in the best case.

[chrisd]

That's brilliant news.

Good luck to you both.

Chris

[art]

Typical. Today MWW gets a "Peak" fertility on the Clearblue monitor, and once again I'm out of the country and not returning until the end of the week!

Definitely doesn't help conception trying to live in one country and work in another. Firstly there's the obvious impact that with 3 nights per week away I'm often not home on the right nights, and secondly there's the less tangible impact on my sperm of me being stuck in a metal tube at 36 000 feet and hence being irradiated for an hour twice a week 

I know that we've decided to go down the IVF route, but it would be lovely if we could be one of those cliche'd couples who conceive naturally after deciding to do IVF, and this definitely isn't a step in the right direction!

[art]

It's all really beginning to happen now. MWW's last natural period this month, so she'll start the down-reg drugs at the start of next month, the drugs for which are now at home...

So in about six week's time we should have eggs, might even have embryos, and if there are enough of them then possibly blastocysts being reimplanted!

Of course, there's a long way to go before we get to that point, and many, many things which could interrupt that happy plan. Even if all goes well, I think that I'm expecting the drugs to have quite an impact on MWW, and I hope that I can be strong enough to be a give her the support that she needs when going through the hormone enhanced mood swings and so forth.

May well post on here a bit more as we start to get into things. Hope some other people will start to post too.

[chrisd]

Hi Art

Good luck with everything, I hope it all goes well for you.

Chris

[matthew]

Hi Art,

Thank you for posting your story.  I know my wife is plagued by people getting pregnant all around her (including her sister!) and people saying to her "it'll be your turn next! *wink wink*" all the time.

It must be especially difficult when you've had children before and people just assume all's well.

Best of luck for the treatment, fingers crossed

Matt

[art]

Matt and Chris, thanks for the comments. Nice to have a bit of a flurry of action on the forum for once!

One bit of good news is that it looks like soon I'll be coming back to working in the UK and being able to support MWW by being home every night. I explained the situation to my boss, and they've agreed to pull me out of my current project a little earlier than originally planned, replacing me with someone else who was due to come in anyway, but not for a few months.