The other half of the story

There is, of course, another player involved in this conception game - Chris. This fact did not elude us, it has just taken a little longer than we anticipated to get his sperm results back. Much longer, actually. As it happens, the lab somehow lost Chris's first results and therefore required a second "donation". So, after another visit to a cold, impersonal (and to his chagrin, not unfamiliar) doctor's office, his final results were nothing if not illuminating, adding yet another complexity to our fertility endeavour. Although Chris's doctor told him everything was normal, our naturopath had a different interpretation of the results. She was most interested in his morphology, or the shape of the sperm.

If a sperm is abnormally shaped, it can't fertilize the egg. Many labs use what's known as the Krugar technique, or "strict criteria", which dictates that if any sperm isn't perfect, it isn't counted. A normal sample using the Krugar criteria should have 14% normal forms, which means 86% of the sperm from that sample are considered abnormal. By this measure, it's a miracle anyone gets pregnant.

So it comes as no surprise that there is an ongoing debate about how sperm should be evaluated and measured, not least of all because of the (human) subjectiveness of those investigating sperm samples. The World Health Organization's criteria is 30% normal sperm per sample, more than double Krugar's "strict criteria". But even those aren't set numbers, with analysis varying from lab to lab. Indeed, the lab that tested Chris considers 15% to be the normal morphology. Based on this reference, Chris's sperm morphology is above-average at 17% - which still means that 83% of his sperm are considered abnormal and therefore unable to fertilize my eggs.

Add to this hodgepodge questions as to what causes sperm morphology, and it gets even more complicated. Some say it's environmental toxins that have progressively lowered men's normal sperm count, while others believe the steady reduction of sperm morphology over the years is due to the criteria itself - labs are getting stricter and stricter as they look harder and harder for "flaws", ultimately eliminating every sperm that doesn't look perfect. Now, many men's results show 2% to 6% morphology.

So, after all these numbers and percentages, what's to be done? Well, a couple of things. First, I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing. Second, Chris is going to follow our naturopath's recommendation of putting him on a detoxifying diet to help eliminate any environmental toxins that may (or may not) be affecting his morphology. We'll know exactly what that entails in two week's time after Chris's scheduled appointment, but I'm envisioning a few months without dairy for my lovely husband. Then, after the detox, Chris will re-visit the all-too-familiar sperm doctor's office and see if he can beat the lab at its own game...