IVF when both partners have fertility issues

[Priceslice]

We’ve known for nearly a year that my husband has low morphology and low motility. We’re just redoing our tests ready to be referred for IVF and my tests have come back with ‘possible poly cystic ovaries’.

It has been a really crappy year and this possible extra hurdle isn’t welcome news.

Have any couples both had fertility issues and managed to conceive/be successful with IVF?

Success stories and the not so positive stories both welcome.

@Priceslice so the first thing to think about here is that most patients are given an unhelpful diagnosis of "unexplained infertility", some specialists think this is quite a lazy approach and digging deeper and finding the route cause is important. So in some ways it is good to know what you're dealing with from the start.

IVF is a treatment which can be adapted for issues, with male factor infertility you may want to do a DNA fragmentation test. If this is high your partner may benefit from seeing a urologist, taking supplements and you will likely want to consider IVF treatments aimed at this area such as ICSI and the sperm sorting chip.

PCOS is something that a large number of women deal with. The diagnostic criteria means having 2 out of 3 of:

• Clinical Hyperandrogenism e.g. Biochemical Hyperandrogenism (Elevated Total/Free Testosterone)
• Oligomenorrhea (Less Than 6-9 Menses per Year) or Oligo-Ovulation
• Polycystic Ovaries on Ultrasound (>= 12 Antral Follicles in One Ovary or Ovarian Volume >= 10 cm3)

I only had one out of three. If you have insulin resistance you can be put on metformin. having a high AFC has advantage for IVF as you are likely
To get a good amount of eggs but people with PCOS can have a higher drop off when making embryos and more immature eggs. But given the high amount of eggs often obtained it pretty much evens out. There is a higher risk of OHSS which you may want to look into, but your clinic will be taking this into account with your protocol.

Anyway I really wouldn't worry too much, your specialist will need to take the results of investigations into account when treating you.

Really tentatively replying to say we've just got our positive test following our first IVF round and transfer. A long road ahead.
I've got PCOS and husband has MFI - low morphology, low motility, low.. whatever the other one is! And so far so good for us (fingers crossed).
As rubbish as infertility is and how many hurdles there are, I've always been grateful to know the problems rather than not know them.
Fertility treatments are designed to help male and female difficulties. In my opinion, PCOS is one of the more straight forward things to treat. And ICSI IVF is specifically for Male Factor Infertility.
I was so upset going into IVF thinking we were the most complicated case because we both had issues and it was anti-climatic because we were actually standard in terms of patients and treatments.
It sucks and I'm sorry you've had this news, but it's still possible for you to get where you want to be ♥️ goodluck.

Unfortunately I don't have a success story to share but I'm rooting for you. Infertility is such a difficult thing to endure and your not alone.
We have male factor low morphology and borderline count and I have pcos. I'm 37 now.
We've been trying since 2006 on / off.
Fobbed off many times and being in our 20s we didn't exactly have thousands to explore the ivf route.
When I did get my gp to take me seriously , We were referred for tests at the fertility clinic which took a few years . After all the tests were completed we were told to proceed directly to ivf as achieving a pregnancy naturally would be really unlikely. 2 months later I had a surprise pregnancy last year ( so it can happen) that ended in a miscarriage and struggled for a year since. Ivf wasnt something we really ever wanted to do but We just did our first round of ivf (icsi) and had a transfer on Sunday so I can't say the outcome yet