We would like to share some inspirational true stories of just some of our IVF patients that struggled to reach success and with whom we have had the advantage to be both of service and encourage right from the beginning to the very end of their journey. Our patients are regular people, no different from you and us, who decided to opt for a different kind of IVF experience by combining travel and medical assistance in order to realize their dream: to start a family.
Dear Maria,
Please convey to Dr. Paraschos our greatest gratitude for his and your help in giving us joy with a baby girl.
My wife V. and I will always be in your debt.
Thank you!
As I promised to doctor I will attach here a photo of our baby girl V.
Hi Elena and Dr Thanos
Please see attached a couple of pictures from 12 week ultrasound of the triplets.
All babies look to be very healthy thus far.
My next ultrasound will be at 16 weeks for a full anatomy scan.
Much love to you both!
Hello Dr Paraschos,
My name is K. A. and I had visited your clinic with my husband last March for an IVF consultation and a hysteroscopy, during which a small polyp was removed.
You then provided me with a prescription of the IVF drugs, which I purchased at the time and 36 h before I was going to fly to Athens to start the IVF I had found out I had fallen pregnant naturally!!!!!
L. arrived on the 20th Dec, and he is healthy and a delight! I have attached some photos below....
Although we did not get to receive the IVF treatment we were intending to at your clinic, we wanted to thank you for the hysteroscopy and all your efforts and consultation at the time.
We still cannot believe I fell pregnant naturally, as I was 43 years old at the time...
Many thanks again and happy new year. We feel you have contributed to us getting Lucas, and we wanted you to know we are grateful.
Best wishes
K. and T.
Dear S. and Dr Paraschos,
I have been meaning to send this email for months but the truth is I've just been enjoying my baby so much!!
I gave birth to T. on 29th January 2015 so he will be 1 year old tomorrow! The past year has flown by and we cannot believe how lucky we've been to get this last chance at becoming parents together and its all thanks to you.
If it had not been for the diligence and attention to detail given by Dr Paraschos it could have been a completely different story. As when it was time to transfer the embryos, It was discovered that I had scar tissue from a cone biopsy which was preventing access. This resulted in me having an anaesthetic in order for a small incision to be made to facilitate the transfer.
My pregnancy then went like a dream and I enjoyed it so much.
Theo is absolutely fantastic in every way. Very happy and content, No sleepless nights, he's been a very healthy baby with no ailments, perfect skin colour, hair, absolutely everything about him is wonderful and he is totally perfect as you can see from the pictures I've attached to this email from birth, 6 months and almost 1 year.
Our lives have changed for ever and we can never thank you enough so from the 3 of us we wish you the best and thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Love & best wishes,
J., D. & T.
Hi Maria and Dr Paraschos! Hoping you remember us, we're patients from the US who came to Athens three times last year for donor egg IVF. I wanted to share some pictures of our beautiful baby boy. He was born on 4/8/16, so he's two months old today. He weighed 9 lbs, 2 oz at birth (big boy!!) and his name is Searc D'Artagnan McCall - pronounced "shark" :)
Everyone who sees him says he is so pretty! And he is healthy and strong and a really good baby.
We just wanted to express how deeply grateful we are to everyone at Embio for making our dream of a baby come true when it seemed impossible. Thank you so much for guiding us through the process and helping us make our son! He is going to have a wonderful life with parents who adore him <3
Thank you again!!!!
This is my 2nd IVF. The first was 3 months ago in Romania. It was positive, but I lost the baby. And then I lost faith in my Romanian doctor because he did not check my problem. If he had, I believe I wouldn’t have lost my pregnancy. He didn’t run any tests before egg collection (no blood tests for estradiol, no ultrascan. Here at EMBIO all these were done plus an electrocardiogram before egg collection.
This time we’re trying with our own eggs and sperm, so we had to be in Athens for 11 days. I could leave tomorrow, but I’ll stay one more day, because we’re driving home, and we want to be on the safe side. Before the embryo transfer we visited the Acropolis, and did some sightseeing by the coast of Saronikos. Athens is beautiful. There’s mountain, the sea, the people. All were so kind. And the clinic is in a very nice area. Besides, it’s very well organized. Not only Dr. Paraschos, but our nurse is very nice, very prompt. Everything is so much better than in our country. EMBIO fertility clinic is the best.
Many people come from Romania to Greece for IVF treatment. Of course, we keep it a secret. We don’t share it with the family. It’s taboo. They wouldn’t understand us.
I want to express my immense gratitude to Mr Paraschos and his colleagues for the help they offered me, so I could feel the joys of motherhood.
The first time I visited Embio I was already 44, and therefore the chances of getting pregnant were quite limited, if not negligible. On the first visit, I had the absolute certainty that I had come to the right person. Besides being a brilliant scientist (in my opinion, the best in the field of assisted reproduction in Greece and certainly, one of the best in Europe), Dr Thanos Paraschos is a great person. His deep interest and sensitivity made me feel confident and strong to go through the mental strain of ivf.
I got pregnant on the second cycle, without the difficulties I've heard in other cases of women my age. Monitoring throughout my pregnancy was perfect and everything went smoothly. Today, 18 months after the birth of my son, I live moments of pure happiness ... This I owe to Mr. Paraschos. I hope and pray each day to God to bless him, so he can go on helping women and couples with fertility problems make their dreams of parenthood come true.
I’m 47, and this is my 1st IVF at EMBIO with Dr Paraschos. Dr Paraschos has worked with Professor Winston, who is also very reputable in IVF treatments, so we thought we’d give it a go. We had tried before in the UK and in Italy with no success. Others said because of age it was not possible and we didn’t have the encouragement.
This is my 3rd visit at EMBIO. The 1st was 3-4 days ago for the first consultation. The appointment was on Monday, and we left on Tuesday. The second time was for the scan. I came on Tuesday and left on Wednesday. The third time we came on Wednesday morning and leaving on Sunday at 11 am.
The egg retrieval was excellent. Everything was quite easy. The consultation and Dr Thanos and Maria were very helpful. She always called and then sent an email to explain everything every single time, just to make sure I had understood everything. She was very helpful during the whole process.
Getting the IVF drugs back home was easy. Everything was very good, the environment, the treatment itself, after care was really very very good. Even our accommodation was OK.
Now we’re off to lunch at Plaka where we’re staying.
You can also read some IVF Success Stories
I’m 33, and we’ve been trying for seven years. I’ve blocked tubes, and they’ve both been clipped. There’s a toxic fluid inside them. In England they clipped them so that the toxic fluid couldn’t go backwards. So my only chance now is IVF.
This is my 4th go. We had 3 IVF cycles in England with my own eggs. I had one chemical pregnancy from one of my cycles in England, but it ended in a miscarriage. After 3 unsuccessful goes I just wanted to try something completely different. We decided we should try abroad.
I saw that Dr Paraschos had worked in London and Bristol, and emailed him and he was very very helpful.
The ivf cost as well is cheaper at EmBIO. We stayed at a hotel but even with all that, it’s still 2000 pounds cheaper than what we would have paid in England.
I had the egg collection on Friday and the embryo transfer on Monday. It took me 6 days, because I wanted to be here for the scans. You didn’t’ need to. You could have the scans in England before you came out. I just chose to do everything at Embio, because I wanted to have a different experience than in England. If I were in England, I know I would be working. I didn’t want to work. At Embio (Athens), I had something totally different. I wanted to have a holiday, just to relax and focus on IVF, really.
In England they didn’t put me on enough medication. They’re too conservative. At Embio they monitored me really thoroughly. The IVF coordinator, is amazingly helpful. I like the fact that you see the doctor all the time. In England you don’t see the doctor. You just see the doctor on one consultation. The rest is done by the nurses. Dr Paraschos you see him every time you visit, which is good. Everywhere I’ve been at Embio, it’s been really positive. The staff speak very very good English. IVF coordinator has been brilliant and the doctor is very very helpful.
In England they always give you too many choices. “Do you want to do a 5-day transfer, or a 3-day transfer?” and it’s your decision. As if we knew a thing about it! Here they just did what they thought was best for me. I like it here because I can let the doctor decide what is going to work best.
Dr Paraschos transferred on the third day. Fingers crossed, it will work.
Then in England you are only allowed one embryo to transfer. Here we transferred three on the 3rd day. It’s just a different experience.
If anyone from England is willing to talk to me, I will be very happy to talk to them and help them, tell them about my experience, because I know it’s stressful about coming here and not knowing what to expect.
“Hello, my name is Klaudia Giese and I am a dentist. For a long time my husband and I had tried to realize our great dream of having a child in several in vitro fertilization centres, but without success. In Germany, doctors’ capabilities are limited because of the degradation of the medical system. We were really frustrated and we desperately sought a solution abroad. In 2004, Prof. Theodoropoulos advised us to go to Athens, Greece, to Dr. Paraschos’ centre. Finally, in 2006, we decided to go there.
Dr. Paraschos welcomed us, and from the first moment, we felt from the interest that he showed that he understood us. The centre’s very high standards, the cordial and familiar environment, the scientific training of the team and, of course, Dr. Theodoropoulos made us immediately feel that the pregnancy test would be positive; we could not believe it. After so many failed attempts, hopes and distresses, we could feel that we were closer to realizing our dreams. During the pregnancy, I even feared that something could go wrong.
However, Dr. Paraschos who followed me throughout the pregnancy was always close to me, ready to answer my slightest doubts and to calm all my fears. Thank God, everything was fine, there were no complications and our little girl was born perfectly healthy. The feeling of holding your own child in your arms is indescribable. There are no words to describe the absolute happiness that I was feeling then. I would like to advise all couples who have not yet managed to realize their own dream of having a child not to lose hope. I recommend, without any reservations, from a personal and scientific point of view, that they contact Dr. Paraschos’ in vitro fertilization centre in Athens.”
