Can I rant for a minute? I guess it's my blog, so the answer must be yes.
What the heck is the deal with always placing 100% of the causality for fertility issues on the female end of things?
Look, I'm over 40. I know my eggs are not in the best shape in the world. And my uterus, well, that's not a pretty place. But our recent 20% fertilization rate is reasonably likely to be the result of sperm issues, and not just egg issues.
I asked my RE about artificial oocyte activation. Her response was that it probably wouldn't help us, because it's only for sperm issues rather than egg issues.
Hello?!? Not to point out the millions of tiny elephants in the room, but we're dealing with sperm that has consistently had 1% morphology. Sperm that has a DFI on the SCSA of 30%. Many, many clinics would call that male factor infertility. But no. Not here. Here it's all about the egg.
Grrr. This makes me angry. Because if we focused on the sperm in addition to the egg, maybe there's something more we could do. Like Zymot. Or PICSI. Or AOA.
We are going to do AOA. And maybe we'll have 0% fertilization this time, and it will prove that the issues are all about the egg! I am ready to stand corrected. But I fail to understand why, given the information we have today, we must assume that everything is an egg issue.
So, so, so frustrating! Is there any way you could switch to a different RE in your clinic? Maybe one more open to the idea of a sperm issue? I'm honestly shocked your concerns were just dismissed like that!
ReplyDeleteThe really odd thing is that other women at my clinic don't have this issue with this RE. She'll order the SCSA and make recommendations related to sperm issues for them. Something about our history seems to uniquely drive her belief that it's only an egg issue. I'm usually pretty good about getting answers to questions like that, but no luck here.
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