Surrogacy Journey Update: The Results Are In...

This past month has certainly been one of ups and downs. At the last update, we were booked in for the fertility testing to start working our way through the list of required tests or assessments.

Those results came in first for me and the outlook wasn’t good or that is what I was led to believe by the doctor who gave me the news. Sitting in that waiting room I was incredibly nervous and anxious to know the results as I am sure any other person would be. In my rational mind, the results were not a big deal at this point, since we would not be using my sperm for our first child (yes, the long-term plan is to have two). The plan was to use my husband’s and mine would be the fall-back option if there was a problem. My irrational mind didn’t exactly see it that way though. I was scared that I was going to be told I would never be able to father a child, which in itself is not an irrational fear as such, but at this point, I had no reason to think anything of the sort. I guess it was just my brain’s knack for wandering into the ‘what if’ scenarios.

Surprisingly, I was called into the GP’s office ten minutes early. That never happens at our surgery. I was actually fully expecting to be sat waiting for thirty minutes or something so it was definitely a pleasant surprise. The doctor wasted no time in getting to it, opening up the results on screen and revealing the condition of my swimmers. The count was fine, there was plenty of them, the motility was fine, they were definitely swimming, the PH levels, colour and everything else was fine until we got to the bottom section of the test results; morphology.

The morphology is essentially the shape of them. The head shape, the midbody and the tail. In all men, we have a lot of them which are intentionally useless. They are literally there as cannon fodder to help try and make sure the healthy ones get through. Many have two tails or misshapen or oversized heads. Those that have anything other than a perfect form - when I say perfect I am told it really is very exacting - is classified as abnormal. They test a cross-section of the specimen and you are given an abnormality percentage. The level at which everything is considered ‘normal’ is 96% abnormality. Yes, the normal level of perfectly healthy sperm is just 4%. Initially, I was shocked at how few of them are supposed to be healthy but when you consider the fact that the male body produces millions per day, 4% is a good healthy number. After all, only one in that 4% needs to get through, right? The real issues occur with those abnormalities because they fail to get the job done. For instance, oversized sperm heads are known to fail to penetrate the egg.

My sperm was deemed to have abnormalities - 100%! Every last one of them tested was a wrong ‘un. They even give you a breakdown of the abnormalities by region. The head, the body and the tail. Unfortunately, my head abnormalities were at 100%. It’s ok, feel free to make all the jokes about ‘bad head’ you want... The bodies and tails were all within the normal abnormalities. The one thing that they cannot tell you is precisely what is wrong with them. In order to get a full analysis and know the exact abnormality, you have to attend a private fertility clinic.

At this point, I was quite literally in shock. This was definitely not the news I was expecting and part of me just wanted to hurry up and get out of the office as soon as possible. I asked the doctor if there was anything that could be done to fix the problem and it was made clear that this is an area of science and biology that needs more research so at this point, no, there was no proven scientific way to fix the issue. It would be highly unlikely I could father a child, particularly in the context of surrogacy.

The Doctor did say that this was just a snapshot in time and that a similar case she had seen was a man who had just got his wife pregnant. I guess she was trying to comfort me at this point and that was exactly how it felt; a platitude to try and comfort me. My head took that as a matter of fact and so I said thank you for your time and left the doctor’s surgery.

As I made my way back home I called Marc to let him know the results. At this point, I was very much in a place of ‘that’s that’. It was ok because we weren’t planning to use my sperm at this point anyway. I then called Lisa to let her know the results. Both of them were very kind, supportive and offered advice which helped for a little while, at this point, I didn’t feel too bad, I was just disappointed. Lisa was keen to remind me, that the process for checking the sperm is very much a small amount under a microscope which they divide into grids and then check an even smaller cross-section. It is a very broad ‘average’ as such. They certainly don’t check every single one by any stretch of the imagination so it is totally plausible that it was just a bad bit.

Once I got home I made that rookie schoolboy error of using google. I started looking up information about sperm morphology. What had caused it? Was it treatable? Were there similar cases where men went on to father a child? Diagnosing by Google can be a slippery slope and so can finding treatment and the like. All of the results and research I found gave me very conflicting answers and ultimately, it would seem that my head was taking more stock in the negative answers than anything positive I found.

This was the start of a very fast downward spiral of self-pity. Looking back on it, I was heartbroken. I wouldn’t say that I am particularly masculine but this felt like I had been robbed one of the things that make me a man. I also felt incredible guilt. I felt like I had, in one test result, literally halved our chances of having a child as I certainly couldn’t contribute. I felt like I was letting down the team, both Marc and Lisa. In the early stages of becoming a parent, a man has one job and I had failed at that. Obviously, I don’t handle failure well. I went to bed that night feeling beyond miserable.

The following day was not very much better so I resolved to focus on my work and just get through the day without crying my eyes out. Once I was on my way home I carried on searching for answers on the internet and I began to see more glimmers of hope. While there have been very few conclusive full studies into morphology, there are certain things that are known to have an impact. A lot of things. Rather than get into everything that I learned here (and there is a lot of it) I will share a separate article for those that are interested.

Thankfully, after a few days, I did begin to feel a little more positive, mainly because I did learn a heck of a lot through research and feel that there are things I can do to improve the situation which will have the pleasant side effect of improved general health. I certainly felt a lot better about everything when my husband’s results finally came in. Thankfully, they are all within the normally expected levels and so everything is good to go in that sense.

What was also positive, is the extra information that the GP gave Marc. When you have positive or normal results in all the other areas, it is possible that a negative result in one singular area is a blip or has been affected by external implications. Generally speaking, if all of the areas in which they test are poor, that would be more indicative of an overall problem. Additionally, and Lisa told me this too, that just because the heads are deemed as abnormal, it doesn’t 100% mean that they cannot get through. Again, to know for sure, you would need to get an extended analysis through a private fertility clinic. That certainly helped perk me up a little too!

So, perhaps not firing on ALL cylinders, but certainly, with the required ones working, we moved onto the next test very quickly. STD checks…

As discussed in the previous article, these MUST be carried out in any surrogacy situation (and quite frankly, should be carried out by any couple trying for a baby, but that is another conversation for another day). For the health of your surrogate and your potential baby, you cannot skip this test.

Our time at the hospital was quite lengthy and had additional elements from the last time I was tested (I will admit I haven’t been tested since just after Marc and I got together) which I will not go into in words because that would be inappropriate. Thankfully, the nurse who administered our tests was very thorough and explained everything incredibly well and was generally a very good-humoured man, especially with some of the questions he had to ask us. We were also relieved that he allowed us to go through the whole assessment together. This was just a formality for us. Our results are already back and we are both 100% clear of everything. Yay us.

We have also begun discussing with Lisa when we will start trying to conceive. We have collectively decided that whenever that is, we will not be discussing specifics just yet, but I am sure I will be able to share an update on that front soon.

Our actual next step is to send off for our Basic Disclosure (criminal record checks), book our Psych evaluation and get all of our wills sorted out. All of which need to be done before we start any inseminations anyways.

Everything does seem to be moving along very quickly now but that pretty much wraps up everything that has gone on since my last update. I will share the article about what I learned from the research into morphology soon.

UPDATE: If you want to read everything I have I learned so far about morphology, take the jump HERE

Thanks for stopping by and reading x