Sperm Testing

Sperm Testing

The fertility doctor had to also check my husband’s sperm. He needed to get a sample of the sperm and one day we had to go pick up a small plastic container with specific instructions to keep everything sterile. The specimen had to be taken and then within 30 minutes, it had to get to the lab for diagnosis.

My experience – Once we read the information about the sperm sample, I guess some men worry if there will be enough, etc. He only needs to ejaculate one time and that should be enough for the sample. There are certain things that he cannot do to get the ejaculate. He can only masturbate to get the sample and everything has to be clean. He has cannot touch in the sides of the container. (Make sure that you read all the directions).
Once you have the ejaculate, you have to take the container and make sure the sample stays at body temperature. So you have to put it in the brown bag, and not put the sample in your purse or on your car seat, you have to literally put the sample under you clothes near your skin to keep it warm. Once you get to the lab you take it out from under your clothes and give it to the lab. –

We will talk more about sperm tests and outcomes later.

HSG

I took a HSG (trying to get the definition) and they wanted to look at
my fallopian tubes.

This is the procedure - This is what happened to me:

I went into a room and changed my clothes to a hospital gown, everything off including underwear but I could wear socks.

I laid on a table underneath an x-ray machine. They insert a thin tube into your
uterus and send some methyl-blue dye up into your tubes. If it goes out through
the tubes it is not blocked, if it doesn't it is blocked. Because things go outside your tubes in not up through your tubes it may be a little uncomfortable.

Ok. This is completely my experience. It was painful..for about 1 minute I had deep
cramping. Now this is coming from someone that has had very bad cramping all of their life due to menstrual periods. So I should have been somewhat used to it. I held the hand of the nurse and gripped the table with all of my might.. The were counting down..10 more seconds, 9, 8, 7..I felt as if I wanted to rip the tube out from between my legs.. but I wanted to finish this so I just tried with all my might to deal with the pain. The test was pretty quick.

Finally it was over and the doctor started talking to me and showed me that
I had a left blocked tube. When I looked at the x-ray machine I could see the picture of the dye coming out of one side but not the other.

The nurse later while I was walking out of the room and was dressed, asked me
how I felt and I said ok but it hurt a lot. She said that some women feel as if
it hurts and some women it doesn't bother them at all.

I guess I was the unlucky one.

next thing my doctor wanted to do was to unblock the tubes (left side), check the other side (right side) and check my uterus.