Semen Analysis

[BJM111]

Hello,

Me and my partner have been having fertility issues and I have currently just under gone blood tests on day 1-5 of my cycle and days 21 and 24 I have also had a hycosy procedure, The dr whom carried out the hycosy said he couldn’t see any issues but we are due to see the consultant on wed in which then I’ll get the blood test results also. My partner went private for a semen analysis though and it showed his sperm count and motility significantly low and abnormal morphology has anyone else experienced this? Does this mean we won’t be able to conceive naturally? Thanks In advance.

It depends on the exact numbers. But by the the sound of it he’s likely subfertile on all 3 accounts (count, motility and morphology). If that’s the case, you’re very unlikely to conceive naturally. Although you do hear some anecdotal stories about miracle babies but that’s less than 1% of couples that have such luck.

You could get a specialist urologist to see if they can find a medical reason for his problems. Otherwise, there are lifestyle things to do to improve his semen - even if it doesn’t get you pregnant, you’ll have a better chance at ivf. The changes are:
Loose pants, no hot baths, no smoking or drinking, healthy diet with 8+ of your 5 a day, supplements eg Proxeed or Profertil.

I think that semen analysis is not an exact science. As they say - you only need one!

We had trouble conceiving and my DH was tested and they concluded he had poor morphology.

When we can to do IVF, we were expecting to do ICSI. But the IVF lab said that his sperm was fine and no need to do ICSI.

We ended up doing half my eggs Icsi and half regular IVF. and ended up with twins - one ICSI and one regular!

We kind of think we wish we hadn’t bothered.

Anyway - that’s our story. Not sure if it is any help to you.

There is a Ferility Dr in the US who used the have a blog around 10 years ago - don’t know if he is still at it. And he had an entry on poor sperm quality and basically said that this still an emerging area and there is no concensus in the medical profession.

That’s the analysis! Thanks for your advice.

Hi there. My dh had sperm concentration (which means count) of 7 and 9 and we were told very unlikely to conceive naturally and would need IVF with ICSI. They would want this number to be at last 30 to expect to fall naturally. Your dh’s is 4, so I’d guess you’ll be advised the same. As pp said you might be able to improve sperm somewhat with lifestyle changes. Good luck.

Just looked at the results. You’ll probably need ICSI as the sample doesn’t look good enough for normal IVF. However, the dr will normally ask for another sample to confirm the diagnosis.

My oh had 0% morphology in a test just before Christmas last year. He managed to get it to 8% and at a point where the clinic called it normal after months or taking proxeed and barely drinking. It has dropped to 4 again then we did ivf in September and they did icsi.

You can get proxeed from amazon and I think it helps with all counts.

Hope that helps

You will be advised to have icsi with those numbers. We also have severe mfi, much worse than your husband's count at

We had this and told needed IVF with ICSI to conceive. Did that for DD then got pregnant naturally again a few months after she was born to get DS. We tried for 3 years before DD with no success.

It's not great, but not too dire either.

We had ICSI with way worse stats (200,000 as opposed to your 7 million, also with 0% normal forms).

We still managed 100% fertilisation and 6 good embryos, 5 of which made it to blast. (BPF, but MC at 8 weeks if you're interested...)

Sperm generally has a high rate of abnormal morphology so it doesn't always mean it's a problem. I have no idea about these figures as it's so long since we did this but we had similar.
The IVF clinic was much less concerned about these things than other health settings. We had a mix of ICSI and IVF and both fertilised.
Also sperm morphology can totally change from sample to sample depending on lifestyle factors (illness, medication/drugs/alcohol, tight pants/cycling a lot). If that's his only sample, I'd def get retested. Sperm rejuvenates pretty regularly unlike our egg situation.