my Husband had a kidney transplant. Can he father a child

[Shania999]

Hi,
My husband was diagnosed with renal failure about 6 years ago.
He had a successful kidney transplant 2 years ago.
He was married previously and they tried for kids for years but nothing happend (maybe due to his renal problem that they didn’t know about them). They tried ivf but nothing worked.
I have a daughter of 13 years old and we had a round of ivf (very expensive as I couldn’t get it on the nhs having a daughter) which also failed.
I would really love to hear if anyone was in the same boat as me? And did anyone have children after the transplant?
So desperate for us to have a baby together and for my daughter to have a little brother or sister.

It's really to do with the quality of his sperm, rather than the renal issue. What did his results show during the IVF?
Sorry you are going through this.

Thank you for your reply . I think he has a low speed count but I can’t really remember to much about what the ivf clinic said. But they said he was fine to proceed with the ivf treatment when we had it.
I guess it’s just the not knowing. If I knew for sure that it’s not going to happen then I could just put it to bed and not think about it. That’s life really though isn’t it.
I’m going to be 38 this year and if it does happen I would ideally like it to be before I’m 40.

I think I would have done a bit more investigation before I started on the IVF route. As PP said it’s about sperm quality rather than kidney function for a man, what did his kidney consultant say about his chances of fathering a child now , did the consultant say his renal problems may have been a factor in his chance of fathering a child in the past? I don’t know if anti rejection medication has an effect on sperm quality but i’m sure it’s a question they will be used to answering.
Apart from that the crux of the matter is what the IVF clinic said about his sperm, I find it odd that you don’t recall what was said, it’s the most important thing in this whole process.
IVF clinics can be “very” optimistic about the chance of a pregnancy and will happily let you pay to go through the process.
Even if your chances were good, with IVF or the more usual method there is no guarantee, no one can tell you if it’s definitely going to happen or definitely not going to happen especially to a timescale.
Did your fertility get checked as well, just because you have a child already it doesn’t mean you will find falling pregnant in the more usual way easy or quick now.

It's unlikely the issue is the transplant itself, however he could have a disorder that has affected his kidney and his sperm production.

If he has low sperm count (and possibly low motility and morphology), then I would have thought you would have received icsi rather than ivf. The success rate of ivf/icsi is mainly dependent on your age but pass 35, it is less than 1 in 3 chance, no more than 20 % at 40 and then very low pass that age.

I've had a kidney transplant; and it had no impact on my fertility. It's not a usual side effect.

Best of luck TTC

I'm sorry you are going through this. I don't think renal issues can interfere fertility.
Best of luck!

Please be very careful when using private IVF clinics. They are notoriously willing to charge a lot of money for services with a very low probability of success.