Like many British professionals, my wife and I married in our early thirties and had been trying for a family for about two years before deciding to seek medical advice. In general, this was because, like most people, we thought all was well and perhaps we were not as focused on the issue as we were later to become. However, subsequent tests that revealed that we did indeed have a problem and our only option for becoming parents was IVF treatment.

This came as quite a shock to us both and even more to me as a fitness fanatic and a relatively successful sportsman. You learn quickly that often there are no logical reasons to infertility. Whether a past sports injury or not, the reasons are irrelevant. Life’s focus soon changes toward this one issue regardless.After the initial diagnosis, we quickly realised that treatment on the NHS was, at best, tortuously slow and, at worst, simply unavailable. We embarked on a series of private IVF cycles. The first appeared to be successful. Eighteen eggs where fertilised and the implantation tested positive after two weeks. We were overjoyed. However things changed dramatically a day later when my wife began bleeding and the pregnancy was lost.

We continued through four more cycles none of which were successful or even resulted in a pregnancy. The financial cost was enormous but the emotional toll was even greater. After four years of attempts our final diagnosis was that further treatment was pointless.

Of all the things we learnt throughout this process, the most important is to always remain pragmatic. As hard as it is,try to lose emotion and remember that you are playing the odds game and each attempt is as likely to succeed as the last. For us this mind set proved true as later events demonstrate. We were therefore not optimistic when we attended Dr Malpaini’s clinic but again we approached this with the same mindset.

However in this case a totally unexpected outcome occurred. Instead of failure my partner became pregnant with triplets and gave birth to three healthy children. Life as you can imagine has changed beyond recognition but neither of us will ever forget the experience of the last five years and neither of us would ever have predicted this wonderful and positive outcome.