Male infertility and IVF at emBIO Medical Centre in Greece
"After 4 years and two IVFs, our dream finally came true! I was 39 and my husband David 42 when we conceived our beautiful baby boy Jordan, now 13 months old.
Funny how you just don’t imagine the possibility of having fertility problems, well I didn’t anyways, as I am 1 of 3 siblings, my parents had no problems whatsoever in conceiving and with no prior history of problems in infertility so. . . I just didn’t worry about it.
In 2011 we were happily married, had our own home and both in our dream jobs. I have always been a planner believing that I controlled my life to a certain extent. I knew I wanted children but I wasn’t in any hurry to have them and as far as I was concerned, we were okay.
After having tried to conceive naturally for two years, we were referred to EmBIO clinic for tests. Both excited that we were about to try something else instead of continuing to do what was not working, our specialist Dr Paraschos suggested we do tests on my husband first as it’s the most logical and quickest procedure to start with. That’s because women can be subjected to a variety of tests in different areas and can get more complicated.
It turned out that David had both low sperm count and low sperm motility. It was a good enough reason as to why we were struggling. IVF was the next step.
We were on our way to having our first round of IVF. In our first cycle we had 4 viable embryos. We had two embryos put back in and two embryos were frozen. Two-failed ivfs, so back to the beginning of the process again. In the midst of all this, we questioned whether it was me who had issues as well. So, I had quite a few tests and scans done - nothing. We still believe the only factor of decreasing our chances of getting pregnant was my husband’s low sperm count.
We were successful on our second fresh IVF cycle and in 2016 we gave birth to a beautiful perfect baby boy!! I screamed and teared and for a second I honestly think my heart stopped from such joy! It was such an emotional and challenging experience, however, I was supported and looked after by both my doctor who is an amazing human being as well as his team who were very compassionate and were always there to explain each and every detail with patience and professionalism.
At some point I thought just maybe it wasn’t meant for us to become parents, but I am eternally grateful to Dr Paraschos and to each member of the clinic we collaborated with for helping us achieve our miracle."