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@AbbyCadabby: I haven't been through this personally but I have a friend who has and I can answer some of your questions. ICSI is where they inject the sperm into the egg. This way the sperm doesn't have to penetrate the egg on its own. My friend needed this and it worked on the first try for her. But I know her doc said its a pretty unreliable process that often doesn't work. So if IUI and traditional IVF fail then they will likely try ICSI.

My husband had a low sperm count, low motility, and low morphology. My doctor referred him to an urologist and he was able to pinpoint the problem. Before we went to see the doctor though I thought we would have to do IVF with ICSI, and we still might. I definitely understand what you're going through. Do you think your doctor will refer him to an urologist? Or both of you to an RE?

I don't know about IUI, but I do have a friend who's sperms were bad in every way possible and they still concieved through IVF. Anything is possible!

We did ivf with icsi and were successful on the first try. We had the best chances with me being under 30 and having no issues. We went to the re because my husband has cystic fibrosis which often causes men to have no vas deferens. It is no different than a regular ivf cycle for you. It is just an additional cost to confirm that the eggs will at least be inseminated.

Infertility is hard but totally worth it. Good luck!

@abbycadabby: I'm sorry to hear that you are dealing with all of this, too. We recently found out that my DH has very low morphology (<0.5 first SA, 2.5 second SA) even though his other #s are good and I have a potentially blocked right tube. So for us, IVF with ICSI is really our best bet. We were told that IUI even with injectable meds for me would only give us a 12-15% chance (ouch!), so we are on board with IVF/ICSI with a 45% chance. We are hoping to do the IVF in June/July, but DH is also scheduled with the urologist prior to that to check on his issues. There is really nothing that the RE wants to do with my problems (i.e. surgery to check on the tube), so no matter what the urologist says, we will likely move ahead with the IVF. In terms of increasing the morphology in the meantime, here are the recommendations from our RE: no caffeine, no smoking, no alcohol, multi-vitamin, eating healthy overall, exercise, etc. My acupuncturist also recommended DH take additional zinc (beyond his multi-vitamin) and ginseng to improve sperm health overall.

Wishing you all the best! Please let us know how things go for you guys!