Making a happy family

Vic­to­ria, 45, and Ross, 38, are one of the thou­sands of cou­ples that come to Spain for its repro­duc­tive med­i­cine every year. Vic­to­ria already has a child from a pre­vi­ous rela­tion­ship, but she want­ed to have a child with her cur­rent part­ner Ross. “Even though Ross is an excel­lent step dad, he would also like to have his own bio­log­i­cal child and I want­ed to share that with him,” says Vic­to­ria.

After try­ing almost every­thing in their home coun­tries, Spain is the main des­ti­na­tion for UK cou­ples and sin­gle women to ful­fil their dream. The Iber­ian penin­su­la is pio­neer in the field of repro­duc­tive med­i­cine in Europe and Span­ish leg­is­la­tion is more lib­er­al allow­ing clin­ics to offer more advanced treat­ments with­out long wait­ing lists.

After try­ing for three-and-a-half years, Vic­to­ria and Ross found out that Vic­to­ria is suf­fer­ing from endometrio­sis and is a car­ri­er of a genet­ic defect, a bal­anced translo­ca­tion in the chro­mo­some 18, which could be trans­mit­ted to her baby.

Her AMH (anti-mul­ler­ian hor­mone) lev­el was qui­et low, which makes it dif­fi­cult for her to get preg­nant nat­u­ral­ly, espe­cial­ly as the qual­i­ty of eggs kept decreas­ing due to her age. There­fore, the cou­ple had already decid­ed that an egg-dona­tion treat­ment would be the best option for them.

IVF Spain is spe­cialised in com­plex cas­es such as recur­rent mis­car­riages, implan­ta­tion fail­ure, immuno­log­i­cal and genet­ic prob­lems which affect con­cep­tion. We also have an excel­lent egg-dona­tion pro­gramme that has its own anony­mous donor pool with more than 500 young, healthy women from dif­fer­ent nation­al­i­ties, includ­ing Euro­pean, Asian and Mid­dle-East­ern ori­gin, so we are sure there won’t be any wait­ing list.

With the help of an egg-dona­tion treat­ment, our fer­til­i­ty jour­ney came to a hap­py end­ing – we couldn’t be hap­pi­er

Fur­ther­more, this helps us to ensure that both donors and recip­i­ents share the max­i­mum phys­i­cal sim­i­lar­i­ty, required by Span­ish leg­is­la­tion.

“For us, each patient is unique and we take all the time it takes to exam­ine every sin­gle fac­tor that could stop a woman from achiev­ing a preg­nan­cy and giv­ing birth to a healthy child,” says Dr Jon Aizpu­rua, founder of the inter­na­tion­al fer­til­i­ty clin­ic IVF Spain Ali­cante.

There­fore, the first con­sul­ta­tion plays an essen­tial part in the whole process. We pre­pare thor­ough­ly with a com­plete anam­ne­sis and med­ical tests. The clin­ic has three ful­ly equipped lab­o­ra­to­ries to car­ry out exam­i­na­tions such as an advanced sper­mo­gram with DNA frag­men­ta­tion and apop­to­sis, for exam­ple, dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tion. This way we are able to make a diag­no­sis, based on the out­come of tests, and pre­pare a treat­ment plan.

By the end of their first vis­it, patients will have met the whole team who will take care of them and of their embryos. The patients know their diag­no­sis, under­stand their fer­til­i­ty options and leave the clin­ic with a treat­ment plan.

“The pre­vi­ous clin­ic we went to in Cyprus let us down, and didn’t live up to our hopes and expec­ta­tions. Here it has been excel­lent. IVF Spain is first class all the way. The com­mu­ni­ca­tion has been so clear the whole time. It has been such a great expe­ri­ence com­ing here,” says Ross.

We at IVF Spain believe that com­mu­ni­ca­tion is key to be able to sup­port our patients at all times and estab­lish a very close doc­tor-patient rela­tion­ship based on full under­stand­ing and trust.

By pro­vid­ing an envi­ron­ment in which patients feel safe and con­fi­dent, we con­tribute to their emo­tion­al well­be­ing as well as to their treatment’s suc­cess. We mon­i­tor their treat­ment at home, from Ali­cante, from the very begin­ning until after 12 weeks of preg­nan­cy.

“Many women who come here place their last hope in us,” says Dr Aizpu­rua. “With the lat­est cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy, IVF Spain is one of the fer­til­i­ty cen­tres with the high­est suc­cess rates in Europe, and we were hap­py to be able to help this love­ly cou­ple and be part of their jour­ney.”

A smile on her face, Vic­to­ria has the last word: “With the help of an egg-dona­tion treat­ment, our fer­til­i­ty jour­ney came to a hap­py end­ing. I got preg­nant and here we are today with our lit­tle sun­shine Rex. Thank you IVF Spain – we real­ly couldn’t be hap­pi­er.”

For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it ivf-spain.com