Creating Super Sperm and Preparing for Our Second Egg Retrieval
I have taken an extended break from writing. It’s been summer. I’ve been busy with work. These are the more ‘traditional’ excuses, but the real reason is that it has been harder than I imagined to restart the entire surrogacy process.
While we pushed through selecting another egg donor, and completed our second deposits, I have otherwise been emotionally and mentally exhausted and unable to put my thoughts and feelings to words. Every time there was an article or topic I was interested in covering, such as the gay German politician and his husband having a child through surrogacy in the U.S. and causing a national scandal, I have not had the will to make it happen.
Starting over is never easy. With anything. But starting over after trying to have a baby for 3 years is not like anything I have ever experienced. It’s not a ‘failure.’ I can handle those. It’s the never happening. The dream that could have been. The forced examination of time lost.
I feel like through this journey and my sharing it, I have also lost a bit of my own individual sense of self. Parents often talk about ‘losing themselves’ after having children. I think I have been so focused and invested in finally becoming a dad, that I lost some part of myself even before having children.
I think this is important for me to realize as a person and future parent. I have the capacity to be consumed by my children. That’s not a bad thing, as I think it demonstrates how much I want them and will cherish them. However, it means I have to have balance for myself. I can lose myself, but not for too long or too deeply. This won’t mean that I will love my children or focus on them less, but rather that I will be a better future parent because I know myself better through this process.
That being said, I have refocused this summer on me. I have gone back to the gym and even gymnastics, my childhood passion. My husband and I have focused on our relationship and our lives in Sweden outside of being parents. We still want this so very much, but we also want to be happy now and until it happens. All these changes have made me feel better and more like myself. They have also made me excited again to keep moving forward with round 2 of our journey, where we have already had amazing news regarding our spermmaxxing results.
What Did We Do for Spermmaxxing?
You can check out my Instagram or TikTok for videos about spermmaxxing.
Even though spermmaxxing is a joke on looksmaxxing, it was essentially a way for my husband and I to take control over this process, where - let’s be honest - there is little to no control. We thought it would be a fun distraction to optimize our health and our sperm in order to try everything possible to make this second round of IVF more successful than the first.
I’m a doctor and not going to get medical advice from social media. I will, however, leverage AI. I find Gemini’s Deep Research function to be a great way to get a thorough, quick overview of a topic. I’m happy to share the full output here, but here is a summary table of potential interventions and their evidence based on the available clinical literature:
We didn’t do all these interventions. The ones with very low or low levels of support were not considered. (Tanning my scrotum did not seem like a fun option). We considered and discussed how best to approach all the interventions with medium to high levels of support. We don’t smoke, but we also decided to give up alcohol to help with overall wellness and health. We made conscious food decisions that aligned with a lower carbohydrate, higher protein, DASH-like diet. We exercised, each in our own preferred ways. We switched to boxers, which proved more difficult than anticipated as Sweden seems to have an obsession with boxer briefs in all men’s clothing stores. We did not pursue any prescription medications such as clomiphene citrate, but we did consider all probiotics, vitamins, and supplements. However, this is something I would like to stress for all intended dads (and people in general to be honest): Supplements are not inactive and can have drug-drug interactions with prescription medications. My husband and I both take some prescription medicines, so I had to check if we could take all these supplements. Turns out, several were not possible for us to take or else they would have altered our prescription medications and been extremely unsafe. Please, consult your doctor before starting any over the counter medication or supplement, especially if you are starting several all at once.
At the end of the day, we ended up with 3 months of lifestyle changes that led to us eating better; exercising more; drinking no alcohol; sleeping better; wearing boxers; and taking vitamin D3, multivitamins, probiotics, L-carnitine, and coenzyme Q10. After these 3 months, all our sperm will have been impacted by these changes, as that is turnover time in the full life cycle of spermatogenesis, which I covered more in a previous article on sperm health.
What Were My Second Deposit Test Results?
When the big day finally came, I was weirdly more nervous than the first time we did our deposits. You can read the full article about the 2nd deposit experience here, but I think I was also more nervous as I wanted our 3 months of spermmaxxing to have made a difference. We were going through this whole process a second time, and I wanted us to have done everything possible to optimize our chances of success at having a baby. I wanted all the effort to have mattered.
Well, I need not have worried, as both my husband and I had great results from the sperm that was then frozen for our deposits. Here is a screenshot of my results:
As you can see, all my results are within normal limits. This is the first test where that has been the case for me.
How Does My Spermmaxxed Test Compare to My Previous Test?
Here are the results from my first sperm deposit, which was done by the same lab in Los Angeles as our first test:
While most of the sperm parameters in my first test were normal, my morphology was not. However, what is most interesting is how much improvement I had in all metrics between my first and second deposit:
Concentration increased 143%
Immotile concentration decreased 36%
Motile concentration increased 184%
Total sperm count increased 65%
Total motile increased 93%
Motility increased 14%
Normal morphology increased 1% to (within normal limits)
My husband’s results were very similar. Everything improved after spermmaxxing. Even though our reproductive endocrinologist only needs 1 sperm for each egg to be fertilized through ICSI, I believe the chances of my husband and I having a healthier sperm for each of these fertilizations is higher given the consistent improvement in all our metrics for sperm health.
How Will We Decide Whose Sperm to Use?
While we are currently days away from finalizing our contract with our 2nd egg donor, an interesting gap on the website came up when I was creating the FAQ page: How to choose whose sperm to use for embryo creation.
I’m happy to share the approach my husband and I are taking, and I can also address some other options for intended dads.
My husband and I are splitting the eggs retrieved from our donor, with half fertilized with his sperm and half with mine. We will select the highest grade embryo for transfer, regardless of who is the biological contributor, but we wanted to have embryos from both of us. I think this is the most common route for gay intended dads who are doing a fresh egg retrieval and can get 20 or more eggs. From frozen eggs, which come in sets of 6, it is harder to split them as these sets usually only result in one or two embryos. It’s possible, but I would suggest that if you are going to split frozen eggs, get multiple sets from the same donor. The diminishing returns in going from eggs to embryos can be dramatic.
What are some reasons when intended dads would not both use their sperm? One would be if one of you doesn’t have viable sperm. However, absolutely zero sperm is very different from low sperm. With ICSI, only one viable sperm is needed to fertilize an egg, so even lower sperm counts can still be used in IVF. Another reason could be if one of the intended dads is related to the egg donor. It’s great if a couple has a sister who is willing to donate eggs. This means the child will be more genetically related to both parents, but it also means that the brother cannot use his sperm to create embryos. The final reason is also about genetics. Sometimes, an egg donor and an intended dad are both carriers of a genetic condition that would result in the child having the condition. Or, perhaps one intended dad carries or has a concerning family history that they don’t want to pass on to their own children. I think this latter situation comes up when there is a strong mental health history on one side. Like all the scenarios, it has to be a discussion between the dads-to-be and their medical team to weigh the risks and understand the options that work best for their future family. As with many things in this process, there is no one right or easy answer to whose sperm to use.
Conclusion and Next Steps
My husband and I are both very excited to have successfully done our part creating the healthiest sperm possible for our future children. We are ready for the process to progress, and I am ready to get back to sharing our journey. There may be some other changes to the website as the year progresses, but I will continue to share our experiences and try to create an informative and safe space online for intended and current gay dads.
