Men, Miscarriage & IVF: Support Group for Men

[al7]

Stories of men's experience of IVF and miscarriage are rarely heard, although they often involve heartache, humiliation, anxiety and pain. In the real world, women are the ones coordinating IVF support groups and contributing their stories to forums. Women are also the ones who make the phone calls for IVF appointments, even when they're arranging for a counselling session to help their partner. This group is intended for men to share their experiences without judgement. The goal is to find others who share similar stories so that we can try to relate, and ease the stress and burden of the journey to parenthood!

My wife and I started trying for kids a year ago. In a period of 9 months, we had 3 miscarriages. The first was at 6 weeks 4 days. The second was at 15 weeks and 3 days. And the third at 5 weeks. The year has been filled with so many doctor visits, tests, etc. We're now looking at starting IVF.

Here are the key lessons we learned over the past year:

1. Carefully choose your doctor. One of the main reasons we are where we are today is because we had the wrong advice and support from our first obgyn.
2. Do all the tests - even if you're told not to. My wife found that she has a MTHFR mutation and that she has a balanced translocation (kareotype blood test).
3. Friendships are tested - those we expected to support us didn't and others surprised us with their kindness!


I guess the hardest thing through all this has been a lack of support. I have struggled with going through this but also with watching my wife go through all the physical and emotional pain and stress. She's super strong and is somehow managing all this really well. I, on the other hand, am struggling and have been really anxious. I've searched online for information and support groups but found nothing for men. And so I thought I'd start a group where we could relate and share experiences.



I hope to hear from the men out there going through similar issues. And I hope the women out there reading this will encourage their men to seek support and share their stories.

[nattie84]

Hi I hope you don't mind me posting since your post was to connect with other males but if I could give any advice it would be to do your research before jumping to IVF. Miscarriages can be caused by many things from egg quality, to MTHFR, to NK cells among others but a lot of these can be treated without IVF as I have read on here. Good luck and don't give up hope.

[al7]

Thanks nattie84! I appreciate your support.
We think that the balanced translocation has been our main issue, however, the second m/c is really the one that's left us confused.
We've been battling between natural and ivf - however, I think we've finally settled on ivf because we'll be able to test for the translocation with PGD. That's the main reason really.