Anyone have advice on how many tries you should give a (frozen, IUI) donor before switching to a new one? I've read and heard that it's good to move on to a different donor after awhile because sometimes certain sperm just isn't compatible for a certain woman. would you give it 2 tries? 3? more? we're using a donor at a clinic, so it's not like we have a big emotional attachment to someone.

thanks in advance.

We're giving it 6 tries and then we'll switch. We know the donor's numbers are ok, they aren't great but ok and he was photo matched to DW so we'd like to conceive with him if possible. But after 6 tries and no success, we plan to re-evaluate.

HTH

Our plan was to switch after 3 for the reason you stated - we had no real attachment to the donor we were using and there were several others who we felt pretty much as good about. Also, I'm young and showed no signs of fertility problems, so we figured the odds were good we'd conceive quickly with a compatible donor.

Didn't end up being an issue, we got pregnant right away (1st try).

I did 8 with the same donor, then switched. First try with new guy worked. Good luck to you!

I don't know. Honestly, I'd go with your gut. I think we tried two different guys last time we were ttc (over the course of 8 months or something) and had a third chosen when we decided we should take a break and re-evaluate.

I always planned to switch after 3 unsuccessful tries. We got pregnant the first try. Then, we used the same donor 3 years later when we were ttc again. That time we were much more invested in the donor, so we would have tried 6 times before switching. It took 3 tries the second time. Our donor had very good numbers. If we were to try and get pregnant again, we wouldn't use a donor who didn't have great numbers; that would be our first priority in picking a donor (since our boys' donor is all out of sperm at this point).

But we're not planning any more pregnancies.

Lex

We tried 5 times when conceiving our dd. DW miscarried 2 times so we knew that she was able to get pregnant by that donor and we liked the profile.

This time around we tried once with the same donor as our DD (all that was left) then 4 times with a different donor then switched because we just felt ready. Our fertility doc was about to pressure us to go for some invasive tests and I didn't really want to so we figured why not give a new donor a go on our last 'free' month. I got pregnant that time and got to skip the tests :)

We used our first donor for, I think 6 times. My RE suggested that we switch, especially after I told him that he didn't have any reported pregnancies (but we REALLY liked him...) It took 4 more times with the new donor for it to take.

We have 4 vials of our fav donor profile and he's a new donor with so far 1 reported pregnancy and we are on our #3 try so if this one doesnt work and the next one one doesnt we will have to discuss it but I am thinking we would buy more vials of him.

We switched donors after 3 IUI's. Got pregnant on the 1st try with the new donor. We hadn't planned on a number in advance, but after 3, it felt right to switch. We also weren't really REALLY attached to our 1st donor anyway, so it was easy to say "3 strikes buddy..." :wink