Over Before it Began

Well,  I know I promised to post yesterday, but things were pretty disappointing at our IUI, and I needed some time to process it all. 

My husband and I are dealing with both male and female factor infertility.  I have irregular ovulation (ranges from day 10 to day 20 of my cycle), along with a clotting factor (prothrombin G20210A gene mutation) and antiphospholipid antibody syndrome.  (These last two were likely the cause of our daughter's pre-term birth at 33 weeks gestation after pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome.)  My husband has extremely low sperm morphology (<0.5-0.5% Krueger).  In previous semen analyses, however, all other numbers were great, so we were told it was likely a non-issue. 

Fast-forward to yesterday.  Before each IUI, the lab does a "mini" semen analysis.  Last time, the numbers were great (33.3 million motile sperm post-wash - basically ideal).  This time, the number was 0.6 million motile sperm.   From what I've read, most clinics recommend a minimum of 2 million motile sperm.  They didn't cancel us, since the work was essentially done, but I guess I won't get my hopes up for this one.  The only cause we can think of for this change is the fact that he had the flu (likely H1N1) in late September.  We've been told it will take about 3 months for this to show its effects on his numbers, but who knows.  In the meantime, we've both sworn off caffeine and alcohol (well, him mostly, as I've been doing it during the two week waits anyway).  We had a fun time at a Halloween party thrown by a coworker of his last night, and he enjoyed his last beer and liquor for a while.  Guess what he'll be doing to celebrate a positive pregnancy test?!