L-arginine and blue sway opposites?

[A Mad Swayentist]

I'm a little worried DH might be "underpowered" as I'm pretty sure now that I O regularly and just need his help to get me pregnant, now that we're on cycle 3 of trying. I was perusing the blue sway stats and was surprised to see L-Arginine had such low success rates - is that a fluke? When I dug into some of the "case studies" it looks like the opposites were more likely to happen when DH alone took L-Arginine, rather than DH and DW both. Would L-Arginine for DH ever be worth it for a pink sway with MFI? And can it still be safely recommended for blue swayers, or are there caveats that should be followed?

(& I'm not sure if I'd ask my DH to take it anyway without getting himself tested first. But lately I've been wanting more to get pregnant rather than just get a girl. And dreaming of my son (even though my original dream was for him to have a bossy older sister - ha!))

[GirlieCat]

How often are you DTD in your fertility window? 3 cycles even not swaying is not an unusually amount of time to not get pregnant yet. How old is DH?

[atomic sagebrush]

According to any theory of swaying, l-arginine should sway BLUE for DH (and DW for that matter but I don't like DW to take it).

IN our blue stats, you have to take things with a very huge grain of salt because many of the men who make all girls have very low sperm count, testosterone, sex drive, etc. and so something that for them, fails to yield the desired result, when taken by a guy who makes boy after boy would just be MORE boy friendly, if that makes sense.

3 cycles is nothing in the grand scheme. It takes fully fertile couples doing nothing to sway, 3-6 months to get pregnant on average anyway.

In order to advise you, I need you to give me a brief list of what you guys are doing for your sway. A lot of times I can find something to tweak. People have a tendency to immediately assume hubby is shooting blanks but I have only seen this truly happen fewer than 5 times where the husband was later found to have abysmal sperm health (and 4 of 5 of them went on to get pregnant even with that bad sperm quality.)

[A Mad Swayentist]

Thanks guys. I'll definitely ask DH about a multi IF he tests low...but I'm not going to ask until he tests (which probably wouldn't be before Feb-May 2017).

In answer to your question Atomic: We're not having enough sex...but that should sway pink anyway, right? I'm 34; DH is almost 37.

DH has a lower sex drive than me, and even when not TTC we'd still only average about once per week in the last two years, plus usually skip sex when I was on my period (not worth the mess, even if I was horny). He is overweight and pretty fatigued from his job in IT most days (he works 9+ hr days most of the week and he commutes an hour each way on public transit). The low sex drive and lack of time to DTD mean I'm certain he's already naturally swaying pink with lower sperm count, which is why I haven't pressed the issue. He says he "helps himself" once in a while but I've never seen evidence of him masturbating either. I'm using BBT and CM (which has gone down since going veggie & skipping breakfast, but I always have a bit of eggwhite 1-2 days before I ovulate) to track my fertile days, and have ovulated each cycle since July when I started tracking. I haven't used hormonal birth control in 10 years - I tried tracking BBT right after I came off the pill as part of TTA, but got upset that I had an occasional anovulatory cycle and decided not to track it at that time. We've just used spermicide and barrier methods, mostly the diaphragm, until this August. Since July I've O'ed consistently on day 13 or 14 of my cycle, but had huge variability in luteal phase length (though some of that may have been due at least once to international travel). Other ladies on the TWW boards have said LE diet has messed with their luteal phases, so I'm just going to keep tracking in the meantime.

For environmental reasons I really don't want to start peeing on sticks and adding OPKs to the mix, but I'll do it if necessary. We got in one attempt before O (O-1) first cycle and two attempts (O-4 and O-2) second cycle; none after O. Again, I just saw the L-Arginine stat and thought it was really weird. In the name of swayence (especially since we're going for a first and don't have much stock in the game), I'd love to experiment on DH if his numbers are down. Though if he were to have serious MFI and we have to go for male Clomid or worse, I'm pretty sure I'd be out on the swaying front.

[A Mad Swayentist]

Oh, and DH is not on any supplements. He takes prescription Singulair and gets allergy shots once a month, and takes Claritin for allergies as needed a couple times a month. I'm taking folic acid and (in the spirit of self-experimentation) 50mg of Ubiquinol 4 times a week (spaced 40-44 hrs apart); nothing else. DH drinks a beer pretty much every night and has a huge amount of espresso along with a donut or muffin every morning. He is not vegetarian, but says he has been eating veggie or fish most days when having his lunch out at work.

[Throwaway_panther]

Eek, I hope it doesn't yield opposites -- my DH has been taking it for BP anyway, and we're hoping to sway blue eventually here so I thought it would only help us, haha.

I know OPKs might not be the environmentally friendly choice, but BBT can only ever tell you you have ovulated, so if you want to get pregnant faster, it might still be a benefit? I feel CM is a mixed bag, too -- I have watery and EWCM pretty much through my whole cycle, so I know it's not always the best indicator of when fertility is.

[atomic sagebrush]

ok I have like 3 seconds, can you bump this for me!! I thought it was short.

[A Mad Swayentist]

Ha, no problem! Except I don't have time to check in every day. Thanks again for the responses!

And I think I understand why L-Arginine SHOULD sway blue: beyond the fact that it's a protein, it's very pro-fertility. So according to two aspects of Trivers-Willard, it should sway blue. But I just was glancing at the blue stats for fun (and again, dreaming of a grinning baby boy, of all things!), and thought: huh. Why does that one look so much lower than the other blue sway factors? Or, is it just that our pool of blue swayers is too small for it to be properly powered? Or is there something else in the data that Atomic knows about from long experience or being able to lift the curtain on the stats and give more input? When I looked at the stats it said 33% success - which to me would say it's swaying pink, not blue! SO if there's something wrong with the data I'm seeing, please let me know!

[A Mad Swayentist]

Throwaway_panther, I really hope your sway WORKS! From what I've read in your previous posts you mostly needed a better diet to sway blue, so hopefully supplements don't play too big a role. I assume you're going full-on HE, right? Breakfast cereals, high protein & multivitamins for the win!

[A Mad Swayentist]

Panther, has your DH tried other things for BP like CoEnzyme q10 or ubiquinol? Those definitely are swaying blue in the stats. I've noticed that my BP has dropped about 5-10 points, both systolic and diastolic, on the low dose of ubiquinol (I was borderline hypertensive before, at least according to my stats at work; I'd always have normal BP at the doctor's office). Also, the DASH diet could be modified for his benefit to be more HE-friendly. Increasing potassium over sodium can't hurt and may help.