EXPERTS (hee hee) if you are on the older side and TTC a Girl would you......

[Aprincessforme]

Thanks Mocha!!! Ok so FR for DH CD 3-11, then DTD on CD 12 and 13. I have no cm only creamy lately for the last few cycles.....would you recommend lube or canola oil during those attempts??? So that would be a total of 11 days of dh releasing but only 2 inside of me. That lowers sperm count right?????

[Mochagirl]

Sylk is a great lube for TTC girl if you can get your hands in it. I don't think other lubes are recommended but hopefully atomic can help you there. DH and I just used saliva

And yes, your plan sounds like it will lower sperm count sufficiently.

[PolishPrincess]

I know this is not about me but thank you so much for asking this question and for the great responses...I am 35 and DH is 36 and I was just going to go for abstinance with one shot next week but MAYBE I should do FR with one try...i don't want to increase our chances of any B-defects...I just worry he can't finish that many times in a week...he never has....hmmm... thanks again this gave me a lot to think about!!!

[atomic sagebrush]

Sylk is a great lube for TTC girl if you can get your hands in it. I don't think other lubes are recommended but hopefully atomic can help you there. DH and I just used saliva

And yes, your plan sounds like it will lower sperm count sufficiently.

All lubes except Preseed and Conceive Plus (including, believe it or not, saliva!) are harmful to sperm and thus sway pink.

KY jelly just off the shelf at your drugstore will sway pink by killing sperm.

[atomic sagebrush]

I know this is not about me but thank you so much for asking this question and for the great responses...I am 35 and DH is 36 and I was just going to go for abstinance with one shot next week but MAYBE I should do FR with one try...i don't want to increase our chances of any B-defects...I just worry he can't finish that many times in a week...he never has....hmmm... thanks again this gave me a lot to think about!!!

Polish, you also have the option of doing a compressed FR or hurry-up FR if that would be easier.

[PolishPrincess]

Ok I am going back to that article to read that again...it's just hard because my husband is BARELY on board and I think he just is going to give me one to two tries each month...I think he wants to try but he wants to be able to tell people this is what I wanted and he was unknowing victim

[atomic sagebrush]

OMG thank you ladies. Ok, so I am not confused here...... I should not abstain even if my dh has a high sperm count??? I had it checked and said we were having trouble getting pregnant and his count was high and his motility/mobility was in the 90's. That scares me a lot!! So, you are saying that I should have him release everyday lets say starting on cd3 - 11 but NOT dtd and then on cd12 and CD13 DTD and have him release inside me as well as CD 14????? That would be 12 days of releasing, so that will lower sperm count???? Or have him release 3-11 and only dtd once when +OPK and through O???? Confused.....I know!! What if he is NOT on diet???? Trying to not give him any red meat but he refuses!! He's back on cranberry and that is it!! I might sneak folic acid in there again but he is reluctant. I am on diet......eating crap...yogurt and rice cakes and white rice and pasta, veggies which I love....no red meat. A little chicken here and there in the 2ww but nothing substantial. I am just so scared my diet is not good enough. I have lost a few pounds but cannot afford to really drop too much. Then I will be un 100 lbs!!!

My husband ate gobs of red meat when I was on the sway diet and we still got our DD. I weighed 123 lbs and only lost 3 lbs!

The risks of abstain have nothing to do with sperm count, they have to do with genetic damage that accumulates over a lifetime and can affect the process of cell division (one of your husband's XY cells divide and become 4 sperm cells, 2 X and 2 Y) The older you are, the more likely errors can creep into this process and abstain aggravates this because the damaged sperm accumulate and age themselves, plus the process of new sperm formation slows down, so you have less fresh sperm being made, more old sperm adding up, and also higher percentage of genetically damaged sperm (because fewer new sperm are being made and no sperm is being ejaculated.)

This is kinda hard to understand but imagine that every day 1 million of your husband's sperm that he's created are genetically damaged and 1 million ones that were originally good, have gotten old and icky and damaged. With 7 day's abstain, that adds up to 14 million damaged sperm sitting in there just waiting to be ejaculated. At the same time, the abstain lowers (dramatically, for some men) the number of new sperm created drops by a lot. Maybe on the first day after he starts his abstain he makes 20-40 million sperm but every day that passes he makes fewer and fewer sperm and by the time 7 days passes, he's only making 5 million a day. With 7 day's abstain, instead of making and releasing 140/280 million a day or every other day (some of which will be genetically damaged but it doesn't matter because so many are good), he's making a lot less, and of these, the genetically damaged ones and also the old and damaged ones, will be in the mix and adding up day by day.

The average ejaculation contains 100 million sperm, so if you're decreasing the numbers of fresh sperm coming in and increasing the numbers of bad sperm hanging around simltanously, as a result that 100 million is going to be a higher proportion of bad to good than if he was getting rid of the baddies every day and stimulating his body to keep making more. I hope that makes sense, it's hard to explain.

HE doesn't need folic acid - YOU need folic acid.

[dramabird]

All lubes ... (including, believe it or not, saliva!) are harmful to sperm and thus sway pink.

That's awesome, because it's exactly what we had to do! With my lack of significant cm and the necessity that I not get to "into" the bd (so as to not risk the big o), it could be pretty uncomfortable to get everything where it needed to be. And with dh psyching himself out so much already, any pain on my part could have caused Mr. Happy to get unhappy really fast -- and negating the attempt altogether. So the saliva was a necessary evil, even though I knew it could decrease odds of pg. I am quite happy about it now, though, with my bfp, since it sways pink. Yay, spit!

[auroara78]

Ok I am going back to that article to read that again...it's just hard because my husband is BARELY on board and I think he just is going to give me one to two tries each month...I think he wants to try but he wants to be able to tell people this is what I wanted and he was unknowing victim

Polish Princess, it is a known fact on these boards that my husband does not believe in swaying and the more I tried to push him to do things, the more he resisted and became disinterested in TTC. So I just had to stop talking to him about it, *seduce* him since he would not sway whatsoever, and even talking about it made him antsy and made his Mr. Happy very unhappy! LOL, the first month we tried swaying in Oct. I was still on IG and we attempted o+12 but he couldn't get it up because of all the pressure with *timing* so that was when I gave up on timing and just wanted to have sex near my O.

[Mochagirl]

My dh wasn't on board either. I did manage to get him to do fr, but I didn't tell him it was to deplete his sperm count since he would never have agreed to that. Instead I told him it would assure us he'd have 'fresh' sperm when we actually dtd so we'd have a greater chance of getting pregnant with a healthy baby. He only did it with a lot of help from me every night - he would never have done it on his own.

He didn't change his diet a bit, though, and didn't take any supplements. He didn't know about half of the things I did, like Rephresh, antihistamines, etc. - all he knew about was the diet since I couldn't exactly hide from him that I was eating completely different things than the rest of the family for 6 months. He doesn't believe in swaying at all...even after it got me my girl!