Undetermined Infertility

We have what is called "undetermined infertility".  It means that we are both healthy and there's no obvious reason why we shouldn't have a large and boisterous family, but we still can't conceive.  Felipe had an semen analysis (SA) in July, just before we moved to Oregon.  Turned out he had a low sperm count and abnormal shapes so we delved into a life of zinc supplements, pumpkin seeds, and loose fitting boxers for use when Felipe exercised.

My gusto and Felipe's willingness to do whatever my next suggestion was only lasted for about a month.  In January, one year after the Dr. in Utah told me that we just needed to keep trying, Felipe had an appointment with a urologist in Hillsboro.  He described his appointment as nothing less than rape, poor guy. I'm sure it wasn't quite that bad but it was invasive and Felipe is very private.  But because of the appointment we learned that Felipe has a varicocele.  The valves in the vein that carry blood from his scrotum back up to his kidneys are damaged, making it hard for the blood to travel all the way back up.  Instead, it starts to pool inside his scrotum, heating the sperm to the point that they may become damaged.  He had another SA at that appointment and the Dr. advised Felipe to have surgery to fix the damaged valve unless the SA showed that his sperm were fine.  Lo and behold, the results came back and the sperm were just fine, happily swimming on their merry way, I'm sure.  So we now had a possible culprit to our problems, but the results weren't decisive enough to justify the $6000 surgery.  Felipe eats a lot of fruits and vegetables each day and we strongly believe that the main factor in turning around his sperm count and improving the quality was that we switched to buying mostly organic fruits and vegetables, which was a lot easier in Oregon than it is here in Utah.

Now we were back to square one.