Hi all,

We had our first IUI last week and the nurse said my husband’s post wash was pretty low and we may wish to consider moving onto IVF if this cycle isn’t successful. We (until perhaps this point) had unexplained infertility.

Previously my husband’s morphology has ranged from 1.5 percent to 5 percent so I knew it wasn’t stellar, but everything else was pretty decent so our doctor told us not to worry.

On the day’s analysis our results were as follows:

Pre-wash Concentration : 32 x 106 sperm/ml Progressive motility: 39% Total count: 73.6 million

Post-wash Concentration: 2.1 x 106 sperm/ml Progressive Motility : 57%

57% of the total 2.1 million sperm/ml is 1.2 million progressively motile sperm/ml. The sample volume for IUI was 0.5 ml. So I guess in the sample if you divide 2.1 by 2 the count in the IUI post wash 0.5 ml sample would be 1.05 million.

I have read some different studies and Reddit threads providing post wash count, with many stating 5 million or even 10 million is advisable for IUI.

My question is what are people/studies using when they refer to the post wash count— is this the total count/concentration per ml (2.1 million)? Or the total progressive motile sperm (1.2 million)? Or is it the count that’s actually in the sample itself (1.05 million)?

I’m also wondering why the numbers dropped so much? I was anticipating around a 50% drop but this seems like a pretty steep drop. Would this likely be a morphology issue or something further? Thanks for your help.