Antony and Chiara's Story (Oct/Nov 2012)

October/November 2012

It all started when I really wanted a child, but unfortunately my husband had had a vasectomy. He decided to have the vasectomy reversed, and I thought, okay, now it'll happen soon, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. For us it quickly became clear that we needed to do ICSI. After months of waiting we could start treatment, and of course we started ICSI full of confidence and hope. At the start we thought, in three or four weeks we'll be pregnant, but sadly that wasn't the case. The first attempt started with overstimulation, which was very difficult for me, and a big disappointment for my husband, and that brought tension into our relationship that almost cost us our marriage. We decided to stop the treatment and work on our relationship first, which in hindsight was very smart of us.

After that things went really well for us, and I was thinking about how I could live without a child, and sometimes I thought it was actually fine, but somewhere in my heart I knew I wouldn't be happy for a long time. Because I'm a believer, I waited for a sign of what and when I should do something. So I decided to go to Israel with my mother, and yes, when I came back I knew immediately that I wanted a child and that I had to try everything for it.

In May 2012 we started again, and this time it was easier since we still had two frozen embryos, but unfortunately the result was negative both times. Well, we thought, no problem, we're still only on our first attempt, so let's start the second, until we were told that the urologist was unsure whether to do a PESA on my husband or not. We had to wait two months for an answer. Well, that was a big disappointment, but luckily I didn't give up. While searching online for a phone number for the IVF department, I came across the site "Human First," which also does IVF but in Turkey, and I told my husband. He said: "You're crazy with your Turkey, IVF in Turkey, I've never heard of that," and I said, let's first call Human First, which by the way is a Dutch organization, and then we'll see. We called the next day, but only got voicemail, so we thought, well, this is going nowhere. But a few days later we got a call from the director of Human First, and that's how we decided to go to Turkey after all. The first impression was immediately very good, we had a really clear phone conversation and I immediately felt full of hope. We had to send our medical information to Turkey, and within a week we heard that we could start whenever we were ready. We chose an all-inclusive package since my husband couldn't come along right away, so it was nice to have someone there who could help us, and that was our host Dayon, who could arrange everything. I traveled with a friend on October 27, 2012 to Istanbul, since that's where the clinic is, and we were immediately very well received by the driver from the beautiful hotel.

The next day we met our host and went to the hospital, and honestly, I was speechless at what I saw: so beautiful and hygienic, and then the friendly staff and the famous Dr. Cem Demirel on top of that. He was calm and explained everything well in English or German, but the host could also translate if needed. So I started a new attempt, but with a real holiday feeling, because whenever we didn't have to go to the hospital, we went out into the city, which is so beautiful, the days flew by and the treatment went great, the doctor took my previous overstimulation into account and everything was fine. We had a problem with the hotel, which was annoying at first, but the director of Human First, Evren, proved her professionalism and took action. It was really nice to see that as her guests we came first. We were so happy to experience how nice it is to deal with a professional organization and to have such a lovely person as Evren by our side. The day of my egg retrieval and my husband's PESA went perfectly, resulting in 7 fertilized embryos, and we were overjoyed. After four days, because the embryos were so good, we had the transfer, and that was the highlight of our amazing trip.

Our experience with Human First and the whole team, together with the wonderful doctors and host, was amazing, and we would always go through such a difficult journey with them again, though we hope that won't be necessary anymore, since we are now 14 weeks pregnant and so far everything is fine.

Thank you once again to the whole Human First team and Dr. Cem Demirel's team.

Antony and Chiara

This story was translated from Dutch by our team. Read the original Dutch version →