FertilityZone

Hi everyone,

I am new to Fertility Zone but I am going through my first ICSI treatment and I'm concerned (read devastated) by what has happened. I am worried that poor sperm quality will mean that we will never be able to grow quality blastocysts and therefore get pregnant.

I am 29 and have no reproductive issues that have been found. My DH is 31, a type one diabetic since he was 31, and it was discovered that he has consistently low sperm count (around 5million), low motility (around 12-15% but never fast progressive) and low morphology (ranging from 2-5 %). Our consultant told us that ICSI was the only way to go for us.

I took 150iu of Menopur daily and when it came to EC they collected 31 eggs. I was in a lot of pain afterwards for several days and told I was at high risk of OHSS (leading to several worried trips to the hospital), but my bloods stayed within normal limits and they decided to aim for a day 5 transfer as they said we were good prognosis patients.

Of the 31 eggs, only 25 were mature enough to be injected. Of these, only 18 fertilised, and four of these were poor quality eggs which didn't develop at all.

So this left us with 14 eggs. On day 2, we had a phone call to tell us that we had a 5 cell, a 3 cell and the other 12 were 4 cell. They said they used a grading system of 1-6 for the embryos and we had one grade 1 (excellent), 7 grade 2 (good) and 6 grade 3 (average). It was assumed that we would go on to blastocyst transfer - an earlier transfer was never really considered for us.

On day 4 in the afternoon, we had a phonecall to say that 4 of the embryos had fallen behind expected development, but the other 10 were all where they were expected to be - I assume at the morula stage.

On day 5 we arrived in the morning for the transfer. The embryologist told us we had one good blast to transfer (they only wanted to do SET) - a higher end 3BB - but that no more had reached blastocyst yet. I was concerned by this but they said they would do the transfer and then let the rest go to day 6 before looking to freeze any.

We found out yesterday that we have none to freeze! All but one other embryo had died - one had made blastocyst but wasn't good enough quality to freeze. Four others had started to form a cavity but arrested.

I just want to try to understand why this might have happened. The embryologist said it was unexpected, but that cycles differ and our next one might be better or even worse! Should couldn't give any reason for the mass death.

I just want to understand why this might have happened. Is it likely to be egg quality (perhaps I was overstimmed?) or is it more likely to be sperm quality since it happened after day 3? Could it be bad DNA? Does it suggest that the blasto they did transfer is likely to give up as well? Does this mean that in a future cycle we would be crazy to go to blastocyst no matter how many embryos survive at day 3 due to the possibility that there might be nothing to transfer. Does it mean that ICSI is unlikely to work for us due to poor sperm quality?

Anybody with male factor had this experience and can give advice?