Some Things Get Worse with Practice: Round 2 for Our Sperm Deposits

Not a picture from our clinic, but still a good rule of thumb during any sperm deposit.

The first time my husband and I did our sperm deposits, I shared the experience as an awkward but mostly exciting three part story.  

Re-reading this article, I remember how truly excited we were.  We were finally doing something active for our surrogacy journey.  It involved an international trip, time with friends, and the novelty of seeing our clinic for the first time.

It was all thrilling, even if the actual process was not something I would want to do again.

Well, three years later, we did it again.

The actual trip and deposit was about 2 weeks ago.  I haven’t written about it because it was so much more stressful and unpleasant than I was expecting.

Without the ‘newness’ of the surrogacy journey and the clinic, it was all just uncomfortable and anxiety provoking.  Even though we have tried to make this repeat experience ‘fun’ by ‘spermmaxxing’ our way through the last 3 months and sharing insights on social media, the actual deposit days were anything but enjoyable.

I was struggling with the pressure of making this deposit ‘better,’ even though our previous sperm samples were almost completely normal.  They were definitely acceptable for ICSI and our IVF process, but because we only ended up with three embryos, we wanted to do everything in our control to make more embryos this time.  

I was also irritated at our decision to not keep our frozen sperm.

This is my advice to all future intended gay dads:

Even if the storage fees are excessive (currently around 1,000 USD a year), keep the sperm until you are done having children.  

We thought we could dispose of our sperm because we had 3 PGT embryos.  We didn’t want to pay extra fees, and the storage for sperm seemed unnecessary after we had been advised by our reproductive endocrinologist that three PGT embryos were enough to have a successful pregnancy.

Evidence based medicine is based on science, but the longer I experience the IVF and surrogacy process, the more I realize how much of assisted reproduction is not completely understood.  Many gay dads become pregnant and have their children after 1 transfer.  Others we have met take up to 7 transfers.  The truth is, no one can guarantee anything in this process, so you are better being as conservative as possible with your sperm…and your emotions.

Do not put yourself through more in-clinic sperm deposits than you have to.  It’s miserable.  Save yourself the time, travel, and anxiety and keep the frozen sperm until you are holding all your children and enjoying your completed family.

We are still awaiting our FDA testing and sperm results.  I’m interested to see if the ‘spermmaxxing’ did anything, and I’ll be sure to share my results at the clinic this time with those from 3 years ago to see if there are any significant differences.

For now, my husband and I are happy to be back home in Sweden, and we are adamant that we will never visit those small dark rooms at our clinic ever again.