May ICLW!

Hi to anyone here from ICLW (and all those who are not, as well)! This is only my second time participating, but I LOVE the connections I have made with other people struggling with IF!

A little background: MBL (my husband, 33) and I (24) have been actively trying to conceive since 2008. I believe we are on our 18th month. That's about 15 months longer than I thought it would take! *sigh* Anyways, we began testing last spring because I just knew something was up. My HSG showed a normal uterus and wide open tubes. MBL's sperm analysis' came back first on the low end of normal and then just plain old low. We did have one analysis come back at 52million/mL, but nothing even close to that since then. We did three clo.mid plus IUIs from July to September of last year, all BFN. I had a lap in October and my RE found just a tiny bit of endo on my cul-de-sac (who knew I had one of those!). We went ahead with IVF in December, which also ended up being a BFN. Our clinic was closing for yearly cleaning one day after my transfer and I think that led them to rush my cycle...out of 17 eggs retrieved only 7 were mature. Our RE tried to tell me that it *could* be my eggs. We sought a second opinion from another RE and he basically told us that the whole thing sounded a bit fishy. We also visited a urologist in February of this year who found a large varicocele. The urologist told us that the heat from it was causing damage to the DNA of MBL's swimmers and that likely contributed to our IVF BFN (apparently even perfect looking sperm can have DNA damage--something even ICSI can't get around). SO, MBL had varicocele surgery in early March and then started Tamo.xifen to increase his counts.

We just had our fourth IUI (but first since MBL's surgery), yesterday. It was our highest post wash count to date with 7.1million motile swimmers. I should have released two mature eggies, so we'll see what happens! We plan on doing two more IUI cycles in June and July if this one doesn't work. If we are still not pregnant, we will do IVF again in August. We have decided to work with our local clinic again, but we are switching to the other RE in the practice.

This journey has been a long one and every month tests me in a different way, but I am grateful that I am not alone and that there are other women out there willing to share their experiences! Thanks for stopping by!