IVF success stories with low sperm count?

There’s a girl called Jaye on TikTok who’s partner struggled and they tried for years before doing several rounds of IVF all which failed/ended in miscarriage, and then they made some lifestyle changes and managed to conceive naturally after all that! She posted all the things she did and her partner changed to be able to conceive

I understand the urgency you might feel to rush into doing ivf based on the numbers you’ve had, but what I will say is please don’t rush into it until you’ve done at least 3-6 months of supplementing the body. I really wish someone told me this before I rushed into doing ivf as I was naive to think I would be successful with ivf straightaway. (Mixture of unexplained and male factor) I would highly recommend your partner to look into taking Impryl / Proxeed for men which can do wonders for increasing these numbers. As well as avoiding alcohol/smoking, eating cleaner, wear loose boxers, take zinc and magnesium, vitamin C, exercise but not too high intensity. Numbers can massively improve following a lot of this above, so stay hopeful 🤞🏻 hope this helps x

Very helpful thank you!! Our plan was for me to do one round of egg freezing this month, and in 3 months after he has made those types of changes, check numbers and try for IVF. I just hope his numbers can improve but curious if anyone has had success with male numbers that low going into the IVF process.

I don’t think it’s impossible to get success with low sperm numbers but you’d rather not risk going through it all if you can help it until he’s got decent numbers. Because the hard bit is making embryos and sometimes with low sperm parameters, it might be harder to fertilise more eggs and then to make good quality blastocysts . My hubby had low morphology initially but after implementing the above advice I gave, he managed to get it to normal in 3 months. And if it’s just male factor you’re dealing with, then it may not even be necessary to have ivf. Like becca said above, Jaye on tik tok went through a few rounds which didn’t work and kept miscarrying with ivf but then got pregnant naturally after they sorted out the male factor issues x

We had worse sperm than you! Research ICSI and insist on it! I personally wouldn’t bother doing the egg freezing separately I would make life style changes and then do a collection and fresh ICSI when ready :) Our first transfer worked first time as did our second 🙌🏻

I would highly recommend the book “It starts with the egg” - honestly eye opening and have super practical tips re supplements for both. Honestly if you do ICSI sperm won’t be a big issues, whereas egg quality matters a lot more so you shouldn’t rush indeed!

My understanding is that the success of IvF is much higher with frozen embryos vs frozen eggs (they seem to be a lot more finicky about defrosting). So it might be worthwhile to wait a few months and see if your partner can get his numbers up so that you can do embryos vs eggs. Also, agree with others above that there is A LOT men can do to up their numbers in a relatively short time frame. We both took Co-Q-10 and it helped a lot. And yes, insist on ICSI if/when you get to that point

My husband had low numbers like that and I had a million eggs but didn’t ovulate naturally so we tried a round of IUI and that didn’t pan out. We went to IVF, we didn’t test the embryos (wish we had) first transfer -failed, second- is our 21 month old boy, we transferred again this past Monday and I test on Wednesday (I did a home test I’m pregnant, I just need the embryo to keep growing) … there is light at the end of that tunnel.

We did ICSI. If you have low sperm numbers it will be what they recommend. They never recommend standard IVF to us, straight to ICSI. We now have a daughter and planning another transfer this month with one of our remaining embryos.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DBybKayRB1J/?igsh=MWgwZTkwaWJzd2FoYQ==

@Wanyu I second this book!!

Hi there! My husband had worse numbers. Before we did ivf we attempted iui and doctor said our chances for iui went from 8-10% to 1-3% post wash. Before doing ivf and iui he was seeing a urologist for a few months who prescribed Chlomiphene. He started taking them September/October last year. And he kept following up with his doctor and his sperm increased a tad bit. He also has motility issues. We attempted to do our first iui in April/may cycle this year which we didn’t move forward with due to our rate given. We decided to just go straight into ivf with ICSI in June and we ended up with 14 embryos. First transfer was August and we are expecting our first baby! We are planning on having more babies with our frozen embryos after this one until we are done. Don’t lose hope. I know all this can be stressful and can be mentally draining. With ivf they pick the best sperm. I recommend taking vitamins like coq10 to help improve egg quality.

We were told by nhs & two consultants to go straight to donor sperm. We asked for a third consultant opinion who told us if we could afford to try with partner sperm, to go for it. We did a HUGE lifestyle change. I was 36 when we started and now turning 38 in a few weeks with a healthy baby on board, I’m almost 13 weeks! We did three rounds, this was my fifth transfer. Our first & second round we got one embryo, our third round we got three. All our embryos were great quality. So lifestyle really can have a big impact. After further testing between transfers 4&5 they found I carried an antibody that was not allowing implantation - they put me on blood thinners and here we are!! ♥️

@Ana I agree it’s one of the “easiest” reasons to have to have IVF. It’s logistics and sperm can’t sometimes get to the egg - hence ICSI does this for you in a dish :) Your chances are good :)

These messages have made me feel so much better! We’re so new to all of it so just trying to wrap our heads around what to do next. Thank you all 🙏🏻

Get your partner on vitamins like Impryl or wellmen conception look into magnesium for him. My partner had 7 mil then up to 9 mil and when we started ivf it was 41 mil!! Healthy lifestyle, limited drinking and exercise.. starting the vitamins asap is critical as it can take 3-6 months to have an impact.