KD Sperm freezing question

[milletpuff]

We are looking into freezing our KDs sperm because he lives in Europe. Where he lives there is only one place to do it (an IVF clinic), and he met with them yesterday, armed with my [extremely long!] list of questions.

To me, the first step would be a freeze/post-thaw analysis. (He had a semen analysis a few months ago and his numbers came in on the lower side or normal.) Well, the clinic says they don't need to do a post-thaw analysis, that they can tell by looking at the sample if it will be satisfactory as a frozen sample.

What do you think of this? When I was talking to a clinic here, they said that it totally depends on the guy, his numbers, and how well it freezes - they've seen guys who can make 4 vials out of one ejaculate, and guys who needed 4 ejaculates to make a vial. It makes me nervous to go ahead with it if we're not going to end up with much to show for all his efforts.

[megincl]

Originally Posted by milletpuff

Well, the clinic says they don't need to do a post-thaw analysis, that they can tell by looking at the sample if it will be satisfactory as a frozen sample.

They can tell NOTHING from looking at the fresh sample. Our KD looks fabulous fresh but doesn't freeze too well. Well enough to do IVF and our doc would have done IUI with it, had that worked for us. But this is definitely not good "intel," in my opinion. I think it's worth an out of pocket test, if you can do that, just to know. And if you have a doc here, ask what they'd want to see in order to do, say, an IUI.

Good luck!

[milletpuff]

Yeah, that's what I figured. Our doc here wants 20mm motile per try.

Freezing kills some, washing kills some. If he's only starting out with 51mm motile per ejaculate (what he had when we did the SA here), with extreme luck and very sturdy resilient sperm, we could get one vial per ejaculate. That *might* work, if I let go of the idea that 20mm motile isn't very high.

But if we have bad luck and sperm that doesn't survive, and it's going to take 5 or more ejaculates to make a vial, then I think we have to seriously consider another donor. That's a lot of visits to the clinic for him (it's not at all close to his house or work), and a lot of effort for very little return. And it's $150 per donation, so it will end up being expensive as well as inconvenient.

Why can't it just be easy once? One time? Please? Where's the ridiculous raincloud emoticon?

[AugustLia23]

Is there any way you could find a closer donor? If that's the most complicating issue...

[milletpuff]

We are looking into that too. It's exhausting though. This donor is a very close friend and we are all on the same page. I totally trust him, and we have 12 years of history together. I am so happy about the idea of having him as a sort of family member. We did consider a local donor in the beginning, and though he was perfect "on paper", and lived a few hours away, we decided against going forward with him for a few other key reasons. But we are re-opening that door, reluctantly.

I feel like it's an insane, delicate balance: using a KD is signing up for something lifelong, so on the one hand, sacrificing what I see to be the ideal candidate for immediate money reasons seems WRONG. On the other hand, money is a very real limitation for us. We have limited resources, have drained most of our cash savings already (but not retirement), and don't have family that could or would help us. I'm also 35 so I don't want to wait and save up money for a year or two - an option I'd be more likely to consider if I were 25.

I hate having to even ASK questions like: do I tap into my retirement savings to keep trying with this donor? Do I go back to frozen sperm and somehow make peace with the fact that that ISN'T the vision I had for my family and for my kid? Just sucks.

[marielizabeth]

We started with a KD and ended up with willing-to-be-known sperm from a bank, for various reasons, but mainly because our donor didn't live nearby and I was having fertility issues and ended up doing IVF. It's hard, but I think sometimes you have to let go a little during this process and see what works out. I had to realize that the goal was for me and DP to have a baby, period. And we needed to do what we needed to do. Now, of course, it seems impossible that DS could have come to us any other way, that any of those other attempts could possibly have worked. It really helped to talk to our donor about this stuff. He said he wanted us to have a child, and if we needed to use a sperm bank then that's what we should do.

Hugs. I know how hard this stuff is.