Thursday, June 25, 2009

To ICSI or not to ICSI, that is the question

This is our latest dilema as we approach the four week mark til we travel to India....Four weeks and both Darren I are relatively calm. It must be the herbal tea and listening to Enya.


Everthing is now well and truly organised for our week in Mumbai and as we have virtually run out of questions...almost, we're preparing for our imminent departure to Mother India and a new question comes to mind: do we want to take advantage of ICSI?


ICSI or Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection is the process where by one sperm is injected directly into the egg increasing the chance of fertilisation & the numbers of embryos we have to transfer to our SM and freeze for subsequent FET if need be.


Originally to help combat male infertility issues ICSI is a great tool made available to men whose sperm count is lower than the considered norm; 20,000,000 per ml. Our tests performed in December of last year showed a sperm count of 19,000,000 per ml so not bad but not above the average.


Given our ED is relatively young and fertile (we hope) and we have been taking a fertility supliment (menevit) daily now for almost 60 days we should be OK but nothing on this journey is certain and both Darren and I want to ensure we give ourselves the best chance possible of a positive first time round.


Will ICSI offer this best chance? We hope so...time will tell.

5 comments:

  1. I've had four REs here in the US in the past give conflicting opinions. Two felt ICSI gave the best chance at fertilization, two felt that natuaral selection, as long as sperm count is okay, is the way to go (embriologists can't tell which is the strongest sperm with the naked eye).

    Personally, we've always had MUCH better results with ICSI!

    GOOD LUCK!!

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  2. The doctors at Rotunda didn't ask us if we did or did not want the option - they told us they were doing ICSI - 'so as to not take any chances'...because we only had 9 eggs. We had 5 embryos using ICSI...and we are about 5 1/2 weeks pregnant...

    I know you guys must be so excited about your upcoming trip.

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  3. We really didn't even think twice... ICSI. This is now standard with the clinic that SI uses.

    We had all 18 of our mature eggs fertilized with ICSI, 9 for each of us. We 100% fertilization and nearly all of each our "group of nine" developed into top grade embryos.

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  4. YIPEEEE, you will be in India before you know it! So looking forward to hearing the good news.

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  5. ICSI seems to be the way to go. We did straight IVF and had great success as well. I think ICSI gives you peace of mind knowing that the "boys" were hand selected for optimal results.

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