Most important part of sway is diet?

Hi ladies,

I'm currently 9 dpo after my first attempt and am not feeling hopeful as I have no pregnancy symptoms. I had sore breasts with both my other pregnancies before a BFP. I did a one time BD at +OPK this month plus diet, supps etc.

A bit of back ground - I've had 2 failed IVF / PGD attempts in the last year which was devastating and am now anxious to fall pregnant. What transpired from our IVF attempts is that my hubby actually has a high sperm count but low motility. This freaked me out as with our 2 boys we fell on the first month trying. The doctor even said he is amazed we fell pregnant naturally! But also did say that perhaps this is not a new problem but one that has always existed and together, as apparently I'm highly fertile, we can make babies! However, I am now obsessed that we cannot even have a baby naturally together and I want to maximise chances of pregnancy while keeping to a sway.

So my question is: if we were to drop certain aspects of the sway, what would be the most important thing to retain? I'm thinking Vitex, Folic Acid and baby aspirin for myself, maybe still try the one attempt at +OPK for next 2 months but not jump and dump, hubby to stop liquorice root? He also takes cranberry and Vit c - still keep that? And of course strict diet with high levels of exercise for myself.

Any input would be appreciated. Thanks so much!

Diet is the best thing to retain. Keep up with the folic acid - this is very important in any pregnancy.

As far as pregnancy symptoms a fair few people I know had no symptoms whatsoever, some right up until bump started showing! FX it works out for you soon x

Can you remember how low his motility was? We have it in the exactly same way as you. 2 boys after 1 month trying.

His sperm: 320.000.000 pr ml, total motility: 56-64% (this one is okey) but progressive motility: 25, morphology: 5 (new lowest limit is 4, but this one is also low). We are also pretty young, so I find this pretty strange.

But as I understood: When the concentration is that big, there is allot of good sperm also. What were you told?

I have been thinking the same as you. What if we never get a third child?

I felt pregnant dough, but I misscarried at 5 weeks. We went from 21 fertilized to 6 on day 5. Day 5 we had only 3 normal.

Anyway, I really hope you get your girl! I am also thinking about swaying if this doesnt work. We cannot afford any more HT.

When are you going to test? Good luck!!!! :)

Have you been testing your ph-level?
Hug

I would recommend to drop vitex, jump and dump and cranberry for dh.

Def keep the diet and the aspirin in.

Maybe LR for dh is too much of a 'bad' thing. It may rise his BP and intuitively i would say that's no good a combination with low motility.

I'm currently looking at olive leaf, thought that i heard that this will increase motility? I am right? Please correct me if i'm wrong.

Hi ladies,

Thanks for replying and for your positive wishes. Mollo, my DH's sperm motility was really low - 10% (not sure if that's total or progressive) although his count was good - anything from 100 - 200 million. After our first disastrous IVF the doctor put him on 3 months of Femara, which boosted his sperm and brought him into the normal range. Still didn't make any difference to our PGD results - no normal out of 8 the first time and one normal male out of 9 the second time. And the down side of Femara is that it raises testosterone so obviously is no good for a pink sway! I was just told that natural conception would seem almost impossible yet I have to question this as we conceived our boys so easily. I do believe mother nature plays a huge role in this and I'm hoping that this is not a new condition of DH's, but rather one that he's always had and in a natural environment, not a lab, that the fittest and strongest would make it, even if that was just a handful! Are you trying HT a second time around? I would've gone a third time but DH said no more science experiment!!!

Thanks for the advice on the olive leaf Bigwish. I hadn't heard about this and hopefully someone else can chip in. Do you think the cranberry for DH is too much?

Just read a small thread on olive leaf and unfortunately result on low tech swayers are not known yet. For ht it seems to help to give the pink swimmers a boost. Apperntly you can't translate this phenomen one on one to swaying naturally.

I think you have to do anything to get dh in good health just to increase the chance on increased motility. I think skipping cranberry may help, because lower pH isn't good for motility.

Thanks Bigwish. I sometimes feel like I should throw aside all swaying given DH's motility problems but this is our last child and I feel like I need to give it a go. I will stop the cranberry on him and see how that goes. Thanks again x

keep diet, folic, one attempt, exercise drop everything else for you

For DH, drop cran and vit C and def lose the LR, add multivitamin with 400 mcg folic and OLE 500 mg for him.

re Femara, it is really really not clear if testosterone in and of itself does anything for swaying. There are some dudes out there who have taken steroids and have T thru the roof and make tons of girls. And of course Clomid also raises T levels but sways pink. so don't put too much stock into testosterone, if the Femara helped him then i'd consider doing it again.

re OLE, while we have seen good results with OLE for the HT gals, it remains to be seen if this will translate into good results with swaying. Personally I think it's worth the chance in this scenario because it may sway pink while helping wiht sperm quality.

Thanks Atomic. Can I please ask why to drop the Vitex for myself? And also, what is OLE? Thank you!