For more than ten years, Ethan Parmer had resigned himself to the idea that he might never become a father.
“After my accident, I really didn’t think it would be a possibility,” he reflected.
In 2013, a life-altering incident left him paralyzed from the chest down after jumping into shallow water from a dock. The thought of having children seemed distant until he met Kiana, his future wife, in 2021. Together, they candidly discussed the option of in vitro fertilization (IVF).
“It gave me a glimmer of hope, I guess. Something that I didn’t really know I wanted,” Ethan admitted.
Their journey into IVF began with the guidance of a urologist who helped collect Ethan’s sperm. Subsequently, they sought the expertise of Dr. Sheena Rippentrop and her team at Sanford’s reproductive medicine clinic in Fargo, North Dakota.
“They came to us with some known male fertility factors, and so we were able to just kind of hit the ground running,” explained Dr. Rippentrop, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist. “We strive really to show them the options and show them that there likely is a way for them to become pregnant. It just might take some extra effort.”
In IVF procedures, the aim is to retrieve between 10 to 20 eggs from the female partner, with an expectation that about 70% of these will fertilize. Approximately half of the resulting embryos typically advance to a stage where they can be transferred to the mother or preserved for future attempts at pregnancy.
“In Kiana’s case, she got a good number of eggs and we have a good number of embryos to use so that hopefully down the line when she wants more kids, we don’t have to repeat this whole process again,” Dr. Rippentrop added.
The Parmers persevered through about a year of treatments with Dr. Rippentrop. Their initial attempt at embryo transfer proved unsuccessful and emotionally taxing. However, on their second try, they received the news they had been yearning for—they were pregnant.
“It was quite an emotional rollercoaster of a process,” shared Kiana, who already has a 13-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. “We knew that there was a chance that we could potentially not be able to have another child. And we agreed that our family is great the way it is, the three of us right now. But we really did want to grow our family, and so it’s been great. (Ethan’s) a great stepdad, so I’m so excited for him to be a father to an infant and it’ll be a great adventure together.”
As they eagerly await the arrival of their baby boy in October, the Parmers reflect on their fertility journey with profound gratitude towards the scientific advancements and the unwavering support provided by the Sanford team.
“Everyone here at the fertility clinic has been so supportive, and they’ve been a great resource for every question that we have, whether it’s a medical question or just kind of the emotional side of things,” Kiana expressed.
“With science and medicine advancing rapidly, there’s always hope for future breakthroughs,” Ethan remarked optimistically. “Hopefully one day there’s a cure for spinal cord injuries, cancer, all that kind of stuff. But there are so many possibilities with things that you never really think are possible.”
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