This hamster was relieved to learn that it all happens in a petri dish. What am I talking about? The Sperm Penetration Assay, of course (aka the Hamster Zona-Free Ovum Test). The male's semen is collected and processed, then combined with numerous hamster eggs that have had the zona (outer covering) removed. The eggs are later evaluated to see how many were penetrated and by how many sperm. A good sign of male fertility is having all hamster eggs penetrated with between 6-20 sperm each.
Hubby's score was mediocre and since we'll likely be getting an unimpressive number of eggs out of me due to my lone ovary, we have been advised to do ICSI. By the way, that stands for Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection - one sperm is actually injected into each egg with a microscopic needle. High tech. Thus, the check we recently had to write out for IVF was even more painful than anticipated. The good part is, though, that whatever eggs get sucked out of me will get a better shot at fertilizing.
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We did ICSI this time around because I have such hostile eggs. (What a term, right?) Amazing what technology can do, isn't it??
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