We wanted to have a baby. We weren’t expecting this.
Embarrassed doesn’t even begin to explain how my husband felt.
We’d been married for nearly a year, his younger sister had just had a baby and his older sister had just fallen pregnant.
We were ready to be parents too, and it was time to bunker down and start trying for a baby.
It didn’t happen instantly and everyone told us that was normal, so we kept trying, and trying, and trying. But a year later nothing had happened.
Related: Fertility. And why everything you thought you knew is wrong.
There was something wrong with me – there had to be. I just knew something was wrong.
So I got tested, but all the results came back ‘normal’ – there was nothing wrong with my fertility. But my GP was concerned that we’d been trying for so long with no luck, and he suggested that I bring my husband in to have his sperm tested. I nearly fell off my chair; it had never really occurred to me that men could be infertile. Naïve, I know.
When I got home, I took a deep breath, sat my husband down, and asked if he could get his fertility tested. I explained that I wasn’t suggesting there was anything wrong with his manhood, but that it was just worth knowing to put our minds at ease.
Related: MIA: For every woman struggling with infertility who feels like a failure right now.
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Top Comments
If your fertility specialist is undertaking invasive tests on the woman prior to a semen analysis. You need a new specialist. Seriously. No ethical doctor would put a woman through those tests prior to ruling out male infertility.
My husband was diagnosed with low testosterone a couple of months into trying. We never had his sperm count tested, but I know this is one of the first things to be affected. Much to my surprise, we fell pregnant in the sixth month, although we needed medication assistance. A friend whose husband had a similar issue fell pregnant naturally a month before me after 11 months of trying. It only takes one little swimmer to make it there, so a low sperm count is not the end of the world, and it is often treatable, but when we first got husband's diagnosis, I remember how devastated we both felt. It was hard to keep the faith, but we got there.