4% kruger normal!

[snowglobe21]

Hi everyone, hope you are all doing as best you can under the circumstances of needing to come to these forums. Its not a good thing that brings us here.

My fiancee and I got pregnant after 11 months of trying (I have extremely irregular cycles) and I suffered an early miscarriage. Soon after he got his SA results back that he had gone in for before we found out I was pregnant because we were wondering why it was taking so long to fall pregnant.

He thought the results were obviously going to be ok since he ended up getting me pregnant, but got a nasty shock when the doctor said there was a problem. How bad do you ladies think the results are from personal experiences? Are we likely to have RPL?

Concentration: 68mil/mL (greater than 20 normal)
Total sperm count: 204 million (probably more as he missed the cup)
Motility
Fast Progressive: 61% (greater than 40 normal)
Slow Progressive: 2%
Immotile: 35%
Vitality: 87%
Morphology: 4% KRUGER NORMAL (greater than 5% normal)

Do you think our pregnancy was a fluke or that the morphology is to blame for the miscarriage?

He is taking vitamins now to improve his morphology as he doesnt really eat fruit or veggies. He also is staying out of hot tubs as he used to go in them every other day and for a couple hours every couple weeks as well.

[SC-Impatient_in_VA]

Hi snowglobe!

The miscarriage could have been caused by the poor morphology, but it was more likely an egg issue, as morphologically unsound sperms are generally incapable of fertilizing an egg. When it comes to eggs, more are abnormal than are normal, and so sometimes (about 25% of the time) a pregnancy ends in early miscarriage (or very early, before most people have even missed a period yet, which is known as a chemical pregnancy, but is in fact a very early miscarriage).

Some people do blame the morphology for repeated miscarriage loss, and in those cases often what is found out is that the man has a genetic issue that's causing even his normally-shaped sperm to go haywire when they meet an egg. This is extremely rare and is almost certainly not the case with your DH, who actually falls within completely normal World Health Organization Standards, which recently dropped the minimum Kruger to 4% with minimum count of 15mil/ml. Your DH is just barely inside normal with his morph but is well above the normal threshhold for count, and so would not generally be considered to be suffering from male factor infertility.

Avoiding hot tubs, eating better quality foods, and taking multivitamins rich in antioxidants can only help. Sperm take 3 months to mature, so any lifestyle changes made today will not be evident for 3 more months. If at the end of that time you do another semen analysis and find no improvement, I'd make an appointment to see an RE (reproductive endocrinologist) and see if he thinks you are a good candidate for IUI (intrauterine insemination, aka artificial insemination), which you certainly are a good candidate for. In that process, most of the sperm that were not capable of at least finding an egg are eliminated from the sperm sample, which is then placed into your uterus so they don't have as far to travel.

My feeling is that you will see success eventually, but IUIs can speed the process up quite a bit, and perhaps the RE can recommend a good urologist for your DH just to do some bloodwork and rule out any hormonal issues. Good luck!

[snowglobe21]

Thank you very much for your reply Impatient. I appreciate it!

best of luck on your journey as well.

[SC-Impatient_in_VA]

You're quite welcome, and thank you