Day one post EC. Unexpected low sperm count and poor fertilisation with ICSI :(

[GiseleAnnderson]

Anyone else had a positive outcome with poor % of eggs fertilised with ICSI??

Has 15 eggs collected yesterday. Was so happy, but embryologist pulled me aside before leaving to say we needed to go for ICSI (instead of planned IVF) as sperm count had reduced dramatically in one year!

Count 5 million (was 25 million)
Motility 24% (was 36%)
Normal forms 2% (was 6%)

Never even considered this happening on the day of EC!!

Lab called this morning. Only 10 of the 15 eggs were mature, and only 5 have fertilised with ICSI. So gutted after my initial high.

Anyone else in a similar position? Feel I have no one I can talk to about it. None of my friends have had fertility treatment. Will find out if any survive for a 3 or 5 day transfer

We are both 35, TTC for 2 years. AMH 39

I had a similar experience except that we were advised to do ICSI from the start due to 2% abnormal sperm and that fertilisation rates supposed to be really really high......ours was bloody awful - 50% eggs or less fertilised on both cycles

My clinic said poor fertilisation is more to do with egg quality than sperm......

I've decided on next cycle to not bother with ICSI and leave it up to natural selection - doesn't matter how good the embryologist is I'm now not convinced that they can actually determine whether one sperm is better than the other and it's our own bodies that are best place to decide which it lets fertilise the egg

Thank you for replying @itwasalovelydreamwhileitlasted
It's interesting that you've decided to leave the next cycle to IVF natural selection, I'm already wondering if we should have left a few of them for IVF to see what happened, but I was on the spot and needed to make a quick decision. Did you decide to do DNA fragmentation etc? (I know absolutely nothing about such things, its such a curve ball...need to do some research) Did any of those ICSI embryos make it to transfer? x

We have done 3 transfers with average quality embryos - 2 BFNs and the other a ruptured ectopic

My plan is to do a round of natural ivf no ICSI and no drugs and just collect the one egg my body picked that month and hope this increases quality.
Then we ll maybe try a round with no ICSI or half and half - half follicles left to fertilise naturally and the other half with ICSI

We talked a lot with clinic about DNA fragmentation but the treatment is with various oxidants which actually if your husband has been taking pre conception vitamins for a while he would have been taking as part of those anyway

We did do PGS testing in the second round and out of 2 blasts one was chromosome abnormal and the other poor quality x

@itwasalovelydreamwhileitlasted

Wow you've been through a lot. I hope your next attempt is successful, I think it sounds like a great idea to try a round of natural IVF.

4/5 of my embryos survived and I had one transferred today (without PGS - the clinic didn't offer it). Fingers crossed!

x