No sperm - devastated

[snowfee]

DH and I have been TTC for 12 months. We are lucky to have a good doc who was willing to send us both for tests. I had 3 x 21 day blood tests, 2 were negative and 1 positive for ovulation. DH results came back yesterday with no sperm. We are both in shock and devastated by this result.
Going to continue to explore our options (including a 2nd test for him) but just needed to share and hopefully gain some words of wisdom from others.

@snowfee mine had the same op! Although he had it much younger. I always wondered if it could be a factor. I'm sure we will find out soon enough

Hello, my soon to be husband and I have been TTC for 18months now. I have a daughter from a previous relationship but my partner treats her like his own. I have had testing and all came back fine but had a Drs appointment today to get his results from a sperm sample. We were told there was no sperm, the dr even got upset and was really supportive. We don’t drink, smoke and have never done drugs. Dr wants another sample taken to be suer of what it could be and has refered to have a scan to see for blockage. We are in shock but staying positive. Any advice would be fab.

Jenn x

@JennJenn4 Sorry to hear you are going through this too. It is such a hard thing to deal with. It broke me and my DH for about 2 months, we just pushed each other away emotionally and physically. It's not until we got our referral to the clinic that we started to accept things. Waiting for the appointments, tests and results is hard.
I'm afraid I don't have any advice other than be there for each other and talk. We didn't talk about things and that's where we failed. If you get offered counselling, take it.

@snowfee how long did you have to wait for appointments? Did you get referred to a urologist or a fertility clinic?

@snowfee thank you for your reply and sorry to hear you are goin through the same. We have a strange relationship even the stress of not conceiving hasn’t knocked us in that department. We are very open with each other, but I will suggest counselling to him and see if he wants it. I think we are both still in shock. He has booked another sample appointment for the 30th so not long to wait like last time. The dr wanted us to come back next Monday to go over things again. She was brilliant! We are going to be refered to fertiling clinic but we want to know the problem why there isn’t any sperm. What appointments or test have you had so fare? Jenn x

Strong not strange

Hi, I used to post under this username about three years ago.

Three years ago my husband was diagnosed with azoospermia. We went through a cycle of IVF with ICSI after a successful SSR (my husband had performed side obstructive and the other non-obstructive) . Sadly, that cycle failed.

Last year, we came close to booking another round of IVF, but instead sought specialist help for our diagnosis. We started seeing a brilliant Urologist in London. Earlier this month, my husband underwent surgery, and had a procedure called an epididymovasostomy. We're now hopeful that my husband will have sperm at his next analysis. It's a huge step forward for us. We hadn't heard of the procedure until we found his surgeon so hopefully it offers a bit of hope or maybe another option for those with obstructive azoospermia.

Hi, my DH also had undescended testicles which wasn’t diagnosed until he was about 11.
We TTC for over a year and after lots of tests on us both found out he had azoospermia. We were devastated and were preparing to use a donor.
We continued to undergo tests and finally they found a few motile sperm that they said would be enough to try ICSI. This was totally unexpected as we had been told he would never have biological children.
We were relatively young (30) and no issues with me so we were successful first time with twins - they are 8 now.
They said to DH that there were very very few sperm but they obviously found enough to work.

@mammmamia wow that is a brilliant happy ending story. Certainly gives me hope for us

My husband had a similar issue and we did everything with ICSI to use his sperm. I wish we hadn't. We had a child using his sperm but then trying for baby 2 was horrendous. We spent so many years trying to get a baby with his sperm that my eggs got old and not worth using for IVF hence second child is donor egg. I'm so angry about it still a few years later. If I had my time again I'd use donor sperm from the start and my whole family would be less damaged than we have been by years of IVF. Don't take your own fertility for granted and realise than any treatment takes a long time and the time goes quickly and runs out before you realise it. If your eggs are good and his sperm is bad you need counselling to look at donor sperm immediately. It's what I wish I had done right at the start. It's a horrid journey and I wish you all the best X

@Cantdoright1 so sorry to hear what you've been through. At the moment I don't quite understand when we make the decision of DH or donor sperm. We have our first IVF Consult on Monday so is one of the questions I need to ask.

@snowfee we were asked at our IVF consult I think.

Later on, we had some tests done (scan, prescribed tamoxifen etc) to see if it was more likely obstructive or non-obstructive.

There's a group for men to chat about azoospermia on Facebook. If it's something your DH is interested in, I can ask for the name of it, if it helps?

I should add, my DH also had bilateral undescended testes. One was operated on as a young baby (under a year I think) and the other side was operated on as a primary school aged child.

I don't know your age or fertility level but I was 34 and had family members having accidental pregnancies well into their 40s so I thought I had time. My husband also said at the start his sperm or no sperm so we tried and tried. Now we have a donor sperm son he says the genetics make no difference which is frustrating.

In my experience the clinic won't offer donor sperm. They will tell you all the wonderful things they can do like ICSI. Just remember success rates at IVF are low. 35% is about norm so that means a 65% fail every cycle. I neivly thought it would work and we would be the lucky ones. Add in crap sperm and odds are even lower. But it's how the clinic make money. IUI success rates are low they will tell you but that's because of the sperm they use. They told me my husband's spem couldn't swim and even if they got to the egg they couldn't penetrate it. So IUI wasn't an option. For less severe problems it may be worth a go but with super healthy sperm from a donor the success rates are much higher. iME clinics tend to push IVF and ICSI for sperm problems. I underwent so may operations and so many drugs because they couldn't fix the sperm so they focused on me when there was no issue. The amount of treatment I had and the time then caused problems. I now regularly get cysts from the IVF and I have all sorts of emotional problems due to the experience. I'm sorry to be so negative. I just wish someone had told us at the start to take time to get your head around donor sperm then do that. The clinics promise the world but they just can't deliver and everyone thinks they will be the lucky one. You may well be lucky but a dose of reality is needed alongside a doctors promise I think. Good luck. I wish you every success xx

I should also have said that I often later wished we had no sperm as then it would have been a much more straightforward decision. Donor sperm or no baby. Having a few sperm the doctor can try ICSI with complicates things. If there are a few sperm dig deep in to how good they are likely to be and get donor sperm as back up on egg collection and retrieval day if you can.