Subfertility

[milwife]

Hi,
Trying since Nov 2024.
Two chemical pregnancies (mid February and early May 2025).
Husband has 4.4mm varicocele and below normal sperm count, concentration and 1% morphology.
We feel stuck in a limbo.
Not sure what we should be advocating for.
My initial bloods seem fine.
We are desperate to have a child.
Very aware our situation isn't as bad as manys, but it's not great for us either. It took my Mum 6 years to fall pregnant with me - I have a lot of empathy and admiration for anyone in a fight for many years as well. Sending all love.
Thanks,
G

Has he had his varicocele embellished? My partner had it done in September and it's made a huge difference in our IVF outcome, albeit still needed ICSI but the outcome was 10X better x

Is that the embolisation? No in short - a urologist said ok to my husband's having the procedure done, but that urologist couldn't do it as they didn't do the procedure. He said the waiting list was 1 year. We're waiting for the urologist to send their report to my husband's GP to hopefully get on a waiting list. Did you do ICSI as you still weren't getting pregnant or like an age thing, if you don't mind me asking? So pleased to hear that for you. Will be a long year, but hopefully he can get it done. How long until you saw sperm improvement? Thanks for replying x

Our GP referred my husband to the NHS for urology consult but unfortunately the wait list for the consult alone was around 8 months. So we saw a private urologist who specialises in male fertility. If you’re based in London or close by you might want to consider. His name is Mr Tet Yap. It was really worth it because he saw my husband privately but then was able to refer my husband for embolisation via NHS at Guy’s and St Thomas Hospital. You just need to make sure your gp also sent the uro referral to GSTT as well so Mr Yap can pick it up. This shouldn’t be an issue because patients can choose which hospitals they get referred to by the GP. My husband was able to get his embolisation at GSTT in 5 weeks after seeing Mr Yap and that’s including Christmas break so we were very impressed. It’s really impt to get it done sooner because after the embolisation, Mr Yap recommends a wait of around 3 mos before doing another IVF cycle to let the healthier sperm take over.

For us, we’ve got the embolisation a lot to thank for because we got a much better result with our second IVF cycle, I’m currently pregnant from that! Good luck OP.

Thanks for this - wow that's incredible. We're chasing the urology report via his GP so hoping we hear soon and can then get onto a waiting list for the actual procedure! Not good they said 1 year where we live NHS waiting list though from post consultation. Ah I see, right. Hope the report from the urologist comes through soon. Congrats and good luck x

Keep chasing your GP, I can't remember why but my partners got done on the NHS has a urgent referral, I think just pure luck! So the wait wasn't too bad. He had the procedure done in September and we have had our second round of IVF at the start of April, we just went with the clinics advice for ICSI to be honest, I'm 30 and my partner is 32 so age wasn't an issue for us. We never had DNA frag test done so not sure what improvement that made but his count went from 1.2mil before to 7.5mil on egg collection. He stopped drinking for 3 months and took impryl so also think that helped!

We went from 1 poor grade embryo last year to 10 strong embryos this round, I've had a positive test after transferring a 5AA (top grade) a couple of weeks ago so a massive improvement. Good luck x