IVF DADDIES

The wedding was perfect. The journey to parenthood was not.

Guy and Milan got married in Ibiza and came home to a country with no clear legal pathway for gay men who want to become fathers through surrogacy. What followed was years of navigating egg donation, genetic testing, surrogacy logistics, and a Belgian legal framework that was not built with their family in mind.

Now they have written a book about it. And they are using their story to push for the legislation reform that would mean the next couple does not have to fight as hard as they did.

What this episode covers:

Why Belgium's surrogacy landscape forces LGBTQ+ intended parents into legal grey zones that straight couples never have to navigate and what that asymmetry costs families emotionally and financially.

How Guy and Milan approached choosing an egg donor and why genetic testing became a central part of a decision that is far more complex than any clinic checklist prepares you for.

Why they made the deliberate decision to allow their children the option to contact their donor in the future and what that choice reveals about how they think about identity, transparency, and their children's future.

How positive media coverage of LGBTQ+ family stories is actively changing public perception in Belgium in ways that legal advocacy alone has never managed.

Why writing a book about your surrogacy journey is an act of advocacy as much as it is an act of memory and why Guy believes visibility is the most powerful tool available to families like theirs right now.

What specific legislative change Belgium needs and why the conversation in Brussels is finally starting to catch up with the families who have been living without protection for years.

Their story is nine minutes long on this episode.

The fight it represents has been going on for years.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Journey to Parenthood: A Love Story

02:43 Navigating the Surrogacy Process

05:11 The Impact of Their Story on Society

07:38 Advocacy for Change in Belgium

Listening in a browser? Open this in the Spotify app and hit follow. That is the only way Spotify tells you when new episodes land. No clinic deals. No referral fees. No false hope. IVF Daddies is the independent reference system for IVF, surrogacy and egg donation.

There is a moment in almost every surrogacy journey where something arrives that nobody warned you about. A result. A number. A conversation with a doctor that reframes everything you thought you understood about what comes next.

For Julio and Richard, that moment came from genetic testing.

Dr. Lauren Garrett joins IVF Daddies to explain what that moment actually means medically, what your options are when it arrives, and why the families who understand genetic testing before they need it are the ones who make clearer decisions when the stakes are highest.

What this episode covers:

Why preconception genetic testing is one of the most underutilized tools in IVF and surrogacy and what it costs emotionally and financially when families skip it and find out later.

What expanded carrier screening actually looks for and why a result that sounds alarming is frequently not the verdict it appears to be without context.

How pre-implantation genetic testing works, what it can tell you about an embryo before transfer, and what it genuinely cannot tell you that some clinics imply it can.

The truth about mosaic embryos. Why a mosaic result is not automatically a reason to discard an embryo and why the conversation around them inside fertility medicine is more nuanced than most patients are told.

Why the same genetic result can mean completely different things depending on which gene is involved, which condition it relates to, and what the actual transmission risk is.

What non-invasive genetic testing looks like and why the next five years in this field are going to change how embryo selection decisions are made.

The question every IVF patient should ask before transfer that most never think to ask.

One result almost stopped everything.

Understanding it changed everything instead.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction to Genetics in Fertility

02:55 Understanding Preconception Genetic Testing

05:45 Embryo Testing: Techniques and Implications

08:45 Pre-implantation Genetic Testing Explained

11:26 The Future of Genetic Testing in Fertility

Listening in a browser? Open this in the Spotify app and hit follow. That is the only way Spotify tells you when new episodes land. No clinic deals. No referral fees. No false hope. IVF Daddies is the independent reference system for IVF, surrogacy and egg donation.

The fertility industry generates billions of dollars annually. Some of what it sells you is medicine. Some of it is marketing. A double board-certified specialist who has practiced internationally is here to help you tell the difference.

Dr. Nurit Winkler has seen what happens when patients follow a protocol designed for a different patient's diagnosis. She has also seen what happens when someone is handed IVF as a first option when a simpler intervention would have worked. She is done watching the gap between what clinics offer and what patients actually need go unaddressed.

This episode is the conversation that closes that gap.

What this episode covers:

Why the treatment protocol your clinic recommends and the treatment protocol that is right for your specific diagnosis are sometimes two completely different things and why patients rarely know to ask which one they are receiving.

Why IVF is not always the right first step even when a clinic presents it as the obvious next move and what questions to ask before you agree to it.

Why Clomid is still being prescribed to patients for whom it is medically ineffective and why understanding why changes how you evaluate every recommendation you receive.

What holistic approaches to stress management during fertility treatment actually do physiologically versus what the wellness industry claims they do and why the distinction matters when you are making decisions under pressure.

Why patients who understand their own diagnosis navigate fertility treatment better, spend less money, and experience fewer unnecessary interventions.

Why early diagnostics change everything and why the window between when most people start asking questions and when they should have started asking them is costing families time they cannot recover.

Why guilt has no place in a fertility conversation and what a genuinely collaborative doctor-patient relationship looks like versus the one most people are actually having.

There is no podcast in the world covering IVF and surrogacy with access to specialists at this level.

This is what that access sounds like when it is used honestly.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction to Fertility Treatment Options

01:21 Understanding Patient Needs and Treatment Preferences

04:23 The Role of Holistic Approaches in Fertility

08:47 Navigating Fertility Diagnostics and Early Intervention

11:40 Exploring Treatment Options Based on Diagnosis

IN COLLABORATION WITH

Ivy Fertility: https://www.ivyfertility.com

Reproductive Partners: https://www.reproductivepartners.com

Listening in a browser? Open this in the Spotify app and hit follow. That is the only way Spotify tells you when new episodes land. No clinic deals. No referral fees. No false hope. IVF Daddies is the independent reference system for IVF, surrogacy and egg donation.

At 15 years old he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The medical system gave him a protocol. He went looking for something the protocol was missing.

What Dr. Connor Curley found in the intersection of nutrition science and chronic disease eventually led him to one of the most underdiscussed questions in fertility medicine: if what you eat can change the course of a neurological condition, what is it doing to your eggs, your sperm, and your embryos right now?

This is the episode the supplement industry does not want you to have. Because it distinguishes between what the science actually supports and what the wellness marketing machine is selling you in its place.

What this episode covers:

Why one in six couples globally faces fertility challenges and why nutrition is the variable that conventional fertility medicine consistently underweights in its treatment protocols.

What the actual peer-reviewed science says about specific nutrients and their measurable impact on sperm quality, egg quality, and embryo development.

Why endometriosis is one of the most underfunded and underresearched conditions in reproductive medicine despite affecting millions of women currently navigating fertility treatment.

How Dr. Curley went from managing his own MS through nutritional intervention to developing Fertility Fix, a science-based product designed specifically for people going through IVF.

What nutrients have evidence behind them for reducing miscarriage risk and why most people going through IVF are not taking them because nobody in the clinic mentioned them.

Why the conversation about nutrition in fertility is not about replacing medical treatment. It is about giving your medical treatment the biological environment it needs to work.

What success looks like when nutrition is treated as part of the protocol rather than an afterthought.

One doctor's diagnosis at 15 years old eventually became a resource for families trying to have children.

That is the kind of origin story that makes you pay attention to the science.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction to Dr. Connor Curley and Phytofix

02:25 The Journey from MS to Nutrition Science

05:07 Exploring Endometriosis and Its Impact on Fertility

07:35 The Development of Fertility Fix

09:33 The Importance of Nutrition in IVF and Pregnancy

10:39 Conclusion and Future Directions

Listening in a browser? Open this in the Spotify app and hit follow. That is the only way Spotify tells you when new episodes land. No clinic deals. No referral fees. No false hope. IVF Daddies is the independent reference system for IVF, surrogacy and egg donation.

Every fertility clinic publishes success rates. Almost none of them are comparing the same thing. And the number that actually predicts whether you will go home with a baby is rarely the one they put on the homepage.

Dr. Deirdre Conway from Utah Fertility Center has spent her career inside the data that patients are trying to interpret from the outside. This episode is the guide to reading that data honestly.

What this episode covers:

Why comparing success rates between fertility clinics without understanding how each clinic defines success is like comparing two restaurants by looking at their menus without knowing what country you are in.

Why the embryology lab is the single most variable and least visible factor in IVF outcomes and why two clinics with identical protocols can produce dramatically different results based solely on what happens in that room.

What age-stratified success rates are, why they are the only comparison that means anything, and why most clinics do not make them easy to find.

Why success in fertility medicine should be defined as a baby in your arms and why any metric that stops short of that number is telling you something incomplete.

Why patient experience is not a soft metric. It is a clinical one. Because patients who feel supported communicate better, comply with protocols more consistently, and make clearer decisions at the moments that matter most.

The specific questions to ask a fertility clinic before you sign anything that will tell you more about their actual outcomes than any statistic on their website.

Why the support staff, coordinators, and nurses at a fertility clinic are as important to your outcome as the doctor whose name is on the door.

You are about to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a treatment with variable success rates at different facilities.

This episode is how you stop comparing apples to oranges before you write the cheque.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Choosing the Right Fertility Clinic

02:55 Understanding Success in Fertility Treatments

05:49 The Role of Embryology in IVF Success

09:07 Interpreting Success Rates in Fertility Treatments

11:48 Defining Success Metrics in IVF

Listening in a browser? Open this in the Spotify app and hit follow. That is the only way Spotify tells you when new episodes land. No clinic deals. No referral fees. No false hope. IVF Daddies is the independent reference system for IVF, surrogacy and egg donation.

You have spent months getting to this moment. The retrieval. The fertilization. The grading. The waiting. And now there is a day coming where everything that has been happening in a lab is going to happen inside a human body.

Most people arrive at embryo transfer day not fully understanding what is about to occur. This episode fixes that.

Dr. Meredith Brower walks through the frozen embryo transfer process in the kind of precise, honest detail that a 15-minute clinic appointment has never had time to provide.

What this episode covers:

Why the uterine lining preparation is as important as the embryo itself and what happens when estrogen and progesterone levels are not where they need to be on transfer day.

The difference between a medicated cycle and a natural cycle transfer, why your clinic chose one over the other for you, and under what circumstances switching protocols makes clinical sense.

What the monitoring process in the weeks before transfer is actually looking for and what measurements change the plan.

A minute by minute account of what transfer day involves from the moment you arrive to the moment you leave including the identity checks, the ultrasound guidance, and what you will actually feel during the procedure.

Why the 10 days between transfer and pregnancy test are the most psychologically difficult part of the entire IVF process and what the science says about rest, activity, and the things you can and cannot control during that window.

What a positive result looks like, what a negative result means for your next steps, and why neither outcome is the end of the conversation.

This is the episode you listen to the week before your transfer date.

Then you listen to it again.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Understanding Frozen Embryo Transfer

11:06 The Day of the Transfer Process

IN COLLABORATION WITH

Ivy Fertility: https://www.ivyfertility.com

Listening in a browser? Open this in the Spotify app and hit follow. That is the only way Spotify tells you when new episodes land. No clinic deals. No referral fees. No false hope. IVF Daddies is the independent reference system for IVF, surrogacy and egg donation.

Millions of people are taking GLP-1 receptor agonists to lose weight. What almost nobody is talking about is what these peptides are doing to hormones, egg quality, and fertility outcomes at the same time.

Dr. Carrie Melissa Wambach is a leading fertility specialist at one of the most respected reproductive medicine centers in the United States. This is the conversation the fertility world has been having quietly in clinical settings while the rest of the internet argues about before and after photos.

This episode covers the science that actually matters for anyone going through IVF or planning to.

What this episode covers:

Why GLP-1 peptides are not just weight loss drugs. They are insulin sensitizers. And insulin resistance is one of the most underaddressed variables in female fertility outcomes.

What happens to luteinizing hormone levels when insulin resistance is corrected and why normalizing LH can restore regular ovulation in women who have been told their cycles are unpredictable.

Why lower testosterone levels, which GLP-1 peptides produce as a secondary effect, directly improve egg quality in ways that no fertility supplement currently on the market replicates.

The critical timing window. Why patients using GLP-1 peptides must stop at least two months before attempting pregnancy and what happens if that window is ignored.

Why higher BMI is associated with specific pregnancy complications that affect both mother and embryo and how weight normalization before IVF changes risk profiles in measurable ways.

What the surgical complication risk is for patients who have been using GLP-1 peptides and why your fertility clinic and your anaesthetist both need to know your history with these medications.

What the science still does not know about GLP-1 peptides and fertility and why that gap matters when you are making decisions about your own protocol.

The most talked about drug in the world is having effects on reproduction that nobody is explaining clearly.

Until now.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction to GLP-1 Peptides and Their Benefits

02:53 GLP-1 Impact on Women's Health and Fertility

05:41 The Broader Implications of Weight Management in Pregnancy

IN COLLABORATION WITH

Ivy Fertility: https://www.ivyfertility.com

Listening in a browser? Open this in the Spotify app and hit follow. That is the only way Spotify tells you when new episodes land. No clinic deals. No referral fees. No false hope. IVF Daddies is the independent reference system for IVF, surrogacy and egg donation.

Most fertility doctors treat LGBTQ+ families as a subset of their practice. Dr. Said Daneshmand built his practice around them.

This is the inside conversation from one of the most respected fertility centers in the United States, recorded with full access to the questions you have been sending IVF Daddies for years and never getting answered clearly enough.

Dr. Daneshmand has spent his career at the intersection of reproductive medicine, community support, and the kind of access and affordability work that most fertility specialists leave to someone else. This episode is the result of that career distilled into twelve minutes.

What this episode covers:

What the actual pathway looks like for gay male couples navigating IVF and surrogacy from first consultation to baby and why the version most clinics describe leaves out the parts that determine whether you succeed.

What reciprocal IVF means for lesbian couples, why it is one of the most medically elegant and emotionally significant options in reproductive medicine, and why more couples are not offered it as a primary pathway.

Why egg donation for gay male couples involves decisions that most intended parents are not prepared for at the point they are asked to make them and what preparation actually looks like.

Why access and affordability in fertility care for LGBTQ+ families is not just an equity issue. It is a clinical outcomes issue. Families who are financially stressed make different decisions at critical moments.

What barriers still exist in 2025 for LGBTQ+ families inside fertility medicine that should not still exist and what Dr. Daneshmand is doing about them.

Why community support is not a soft add-on to fertility treatment. It is a measurable factor in who completes their journey and who drops out.

What has changed in fertility services for LGBTQ+ families over the last decade and what the next decade needs to deliver.

Their success is the purpose.

Everything else is just medicine.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Introduction to Surrogacy and IVF Journey

02:49 Supporting LGBTQIA+ Families in Fertility

06:10 Options for Gay Male Couples

09:02 Family Building for Gay Female Couples

11:53 Access and Affordability in Fertility Care

CONNECT WITH DR. SAID DANESHMAND

Podcast: FertiliTEA with Dr. D on Spotify

IN COLLABORATION WITH

Ivy Fertility: https://www.ivyfertility.com

Listening in a browser? Open this in the Spotify app and hit follow. That is the only way Spotify tells you when new episodes land. No clinic deals. No referral fees. No false hope. IVF Daddies is the independent reference system for IVF, surrogacy and egg donation.

In this episode of the IVF Daddy's Podcast, the hosts delve into various topics surrounding fertility, nutrition, and lifestyle choices. They discuss the controversial effects of Ozempic on pregnancy, the importance of nutrition in fertility, and the strict requirements of IVF and surrogacy. The conversation also touches on the broader implications of diet as medicine and how to navigate nutrition with children, emphasizing moderation and education.

Takeaways

Creating engaging podcast content can be challenging.

Ozempic has been linked to a rise in pregnancies.

Nutrition plays a significant role in fertility and overall health.

IVF and surrogacy require strict lifestyle and dietary adherence.

Food can be seen as medicine in managing health.

Obesity is a growing epidemic with serious implications.

Education about food sources is crucial for children.

Moderation is key in children's diets to prevent cravings.

Nutritionists often cater to what clients want to hear.

Eating habits can impact social interactions and relationships.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Podcasting Challenges

02:51 Ozempic and Pregnancy: A Controversial Discussion

05:29 Nutrition's Role in Fertility

12:46 The Dichotomy of IVF and Natural Conception

16:42 Food as Medicine: The Impact of Diet on Health

20:58 Parenting and Nutrition: Educating Children on Food Choices

Sound Bites

"Ozempic babies are on the rise!"

"Food is thy medicine!"

"Cows are raped for milk?"

Keywords

IVF, Ozempic, pregnancy, nutrition, fertility, lifestyle choices, food as medicine, surrogacy, health, parenting

In this episode of the IVF Daddies podcast, hosts Julio and Richard delve into the complexities of endometriosis, an often invisible disease that affects many women. They discuss the societal perceptions surrounding women's health, the disbelief women face regarding their pain, and the lack of standard medical practices for diagnosing and treating conditions like endometriosis. The conversation emphasizes the need for better awareness, education, and empowerment in women's health decisions, advocating for regular health checkups that include fertility assessments and medical imaging for conditions that are often overlooked.

Endometriosis, women's health, invisible disease, medical practices, fertility, societal impact, awareness, gynecological health, health checkups, empowermenttakeaways

• Endometriosis is an invisible disease that often goes undiagnosed for years.
• Women frequently face disbelief regarding their pain and health concerns.
• There is a lack of standard medical practices for women's health issues.
• Societal perceptions often undermine women's health experiences.
• Empowerment in health decisions is crucial for women.
• Medical imaging for conditions like endometriosis is not standard practice.
• Women should have regular checkups that include fertility assessments.
• The conversation around women's health needs to be more open and inclusive.
• Cultural differences affect women's access to healthcare.
• Awareness and education about women's health issues are essential.

• Unveiling Endometriosis: The Invisible Struggle
• Breaking the Silence on Women's Health

• "Endometriosis is an invisible disease."
• "Women frequently face disbelief regarding their pain."
• "Awareness about women's health issues is essential."
• "Endometriosis: The disease no one talks about."

titlesSound Bites

Chapters

00:00 Understanding Endometriosis

09:49 The Societal Impact on Women's Health

19:59 The Need for Better Medical Practices

23:01 Concluding Thoughts on Women's Health Awareness