Hi everyone
I am 31 and my partner is 43, we have recently started TTC our first in October. I am finding myself worried and tense for several reasons (sorry for the length, please stay with it!)
My partner has chronic fatigue as well as problems with his stomach and digestion - he had many operations as a child on his lower abdominal area. We wonder if this could affect his fertility - his semen is quite watery and he also has a bit of erectile dysfunction however is on meds for this and functions absolutely normally with the meds. He has little body hair too so we think he may have low testosterone.
He hasn't had a fertility test and doesn't want to. He says he just wants to try naturally and see what happens. He really, really wants children but I think probably he just doesn't want to be tested and told he has a low sperm count/ low motility.
I worry for a few reasons - partly because of his age and also partly because of our wedding. We were due to get married in April 2020 - it was put back to April 2021 due to the pandemic - and we have just put it back ANOTHER year to April 2022. It's a big party with over 100 people and we have already paid for it all. We can't easily just get a refund and have a smaller wedding.
Timing the pregnancy around the wedding is now going to be very difficult.... if we get pregnant very soon, we'd have a 6 month old baby at the wedding and that will be OK - I can just give them to parents to look after. But if we end up TTC for months unsuccessfully, we could end up with such awkward timings with the wedding and being pregnant/ having very tiny baby!
It's all just a nightmare and has been a really stressful year. I feel a pressure to get pregnant soon if we are going to because of his age. I feel like I just want to know if there's a problem so we can plan and deal with it. I've been tracking my cycles and ovulation etc. and everything seems normal with me although of course I could have a problem too, it's just it seems quite likely for him with his health issues.
I guess what I am saying is that I wish he would get a semen analysis done just so that we can find out the facts, but he doesn't want to - so should I ask him about it again or should I just go with what he wants?