Poor sperm motility - any success stories?

[OK92]

Just wondering if anyone has any success stories following poor sperm motility results. DH got results back of 17% progressive motility (normal is above 30%). We have been TTC for 7 cycles which I am aware isn't that long but we decided to do private tests as DD was conceived first try. Other results (count and morphology) were normal.

Has anyone had this and not had to go down the ICSI route? Feeling very deflated.

My husband had extremely poor sperm results - both in numbers and motility - and we were told it would be almost impossible to conceive naturally. Tried one go at IVF which failed. Whilst stressed to the eyeballs and wondering how we'd afford the next IVF attempt I fell pregnant naturally. That cycle I'd made sure I kept my hips in the air after we'd DTD. I'd also read that female orgasm helped after the man has ejaculated. It's to do with the hormones released and the way the cervix dips in and out of the vagina. Lo and behold DD1. Two years later, same technique and DD2 arrived. Never used contraception again and never tried the hips/orgasm thing again, and no more pregnancies.

We'd been trying for years before these successes BTW.

@Sausagedogsarethebest thanks for replying. We've been doing hips in the air but will carry on and keep hoping for a miracle 🤞🏼

@OK92 maybe get him to take impryl or similar. My husband has been on it for a year now (as well as other supplements) and his motility went from about 10% to 25% after six months. It takes time for sperm to improve so it might be worth giving yourself a few months and see what happens. We are doing IVF now but we’ve never conceived before so it might just be that you need a few more motile swimmers since you didn’t have issues before.

@thislittlebird thank you. He's started on a variety of supplements so we will retest in a few months and see if any improvement. Do you mind saying which other supplements your DH took? I hope IVF goes well for you x

@OK92 thank you! We’ll know more by next week and hoping for decent fertilisation. He’s on a long list now and I’m not sure exactly what but at the time I think he was mostly on impryl, ubiquinol, omega 3, vitamin c.

Would also recommend Impryl. My husband's results improved with it too and now I am 22 weeks pregnant. Wishing you all the best.

@loulou2021 thank you! And congrats :)

My husband had atrocious sperm. Literally 100,000 per sample with most unmoving/deformed. We conceived naturally whilst awaiting ivf. Miracles can happen. Eventually icsi for no.2 as we were never lucky again. Good luck

@Scottishgirl85 thank you and congrats - every positive story gives me a little bit of hope.

I thought I’d give an update on our outcome so far. We had egg collection last Friday, 15 eggs collected, 13 viable, 9 of which fertilised and as of today we have 3 good quality embryos and 2 that may or may not catch up. We had icsi, they said they managed to get DH’s motility from 18% to 50% on the day using the filtering process they do. They won’t be transferred just yet but hopefully at least one will work out when we do get round to transferring in April.

@thislittlebird thank you for the update and that's great news on the results. Fingers crossed all goes well in April for you. We will give the supplements a bit of time to kick in before doing another SA and seeing Dr Ramsey in between.

@OK92 we got up to four frozen today, I’m very happy considering the motility issues. Hopefully when you see Ramsay you’ll get some good/improved SA and frag news!

@thislittlebird that's great! Can I ask if it was just MFI for you, specifically motility? Hoping supplements do something but also want to be realistic with myself about potentially needing IVF down the line.

@OK92 yeah, as far as we know it was MFI. My egg quality seems since we now have good some embryos, but DH’s motility was 18% on the day and it has ranged from 9-25% on the various samples he’s given. You can get lucky, it does happen, but it didn’t happen for us. We started trying in Oct 2019.

*egg quality seems ok

@thislittlebird I think we are just MFI too but it's hard not to worry there's something wrong with me too. My DH count was quite high and morphology normal so despite low motility in theory there should still be enough motile sperm but it clearly isn't working yet!

@OK92 it definitely counts in your favour that you’ve conceived before though, so that’s positive and he could have had those issues back then. Your dh sounds like mine results wise, motility is the most annoying one but it’s good that he can spend some months on the supplements and you might get lucky in the meantime!

@thislittlebird yes true! It's great to hear your success story so far, gives me hope if we do end up going down the ICSI route later this year.

@OK92 just curious to know, did you concieve naturally as your case is same like mine.

I’ve just read this and realised it’s old and I’m on it so thought I’d update. We eventually had success in September 2023 on our third collection cycle and I’m 27 weeks pregnant. It never happened naturally for us in almost 5 years, maybe there was more going on with me and not just MFI (low progesterone and a very reactive immune system for me, possibly). We also found dh had 100% antisperm antibodies quite late on in the process, which explains why his swimmers weren’t swimming.

@thislittlebird congrats! Hope the rest of the pregnancy goes smooth for you.

@Justhope1991 I conceived naturally the month after posting this thread, extremely grateful and will never know what exactly helped but my DH was on a concoction of supplements (as well as lifestyle changes like cutting caffeine, alcohol, spin bike) and I had also had a hycosy in the cycle before conceiving too.