Levi Delvin-Attille and Alicia Hughes Brown wanted nothing more than to be parents.
The couple, from Manchester, England, started trying for a baby right after they got engaged in August 2022.
But after six months of trying and failing to get pregnant, Alicia, 38, decided to visit her doctor to investigate if there were any underlying health problems.
'I thought that it was going to happen instantly,' said Alicia, who has a 14-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.
'We'd been trying six months before we went to the doctors and he said, "With all due respect, I don't think it's going to be you that has a problem because you already have a child."'
The couple decided to get Levi's sperm tested and in November 2023 they were 'heartbroken' to learn the 37-year-old had azoospermia.
'When the results came back, there was nothing there. Levi had azoospermia, it was horrible, it was heartbreaking for him. It was pretty destroying for us,' Alicia said.
The condition describes an absence of, or very few, sperm in the ejaculate, with some studies finding that over-exercising can be detrimental to sperm production.
And the reason behind Levi's diagnosis of azoospermia shocked them both.
'The doctor said he [Levi] was in the gym a lot, every day,' Alicia said.
'They said, "Sometimes your body is producing so much testosterone because you're in the gym that it can affect your sperm count," which a lot of people don't know.
'We had no idea about that. I never thought that it would be with the fitter person in the relationship.
'The fact that the one going to the gym is the one with the issues and that it could have been down to the gym is mad.'
Levi said: 'I was speaking to another guy and he was training a lot and he was struggling to get an erection.
'He swam a lot and he said a lot of it is to do with overtraining and sometimes it can imbalance your sperm levels. I didn't think that was possible.'
After the diagnosis, the couple were referred for IVF.
'We had quite a long, frank conversation about IVF,' Alicia said.
'We decided that due to my age and because I've already got a child, that we weren't going to take that offer up.
'It was something that we didn't want to put ourselves through, especially when the chances were so, so, so low.'
The couple instead decided to shelve their baby plans and shift their focus to planning their dream wedding in Kos, Greece, in July 2025.
'We thought having children wasn't for us, so we needed to give ourselves a positive,' Alicia said.
But in March 2024, she started to notice strange symptoms.
'I was in a café with my friend and I said the coffee smelled funny and she said, "Take a pregnancy test - you're probably pregnant,"' Alicia said.
'I thought, "I can't be - this isn't Mary and Jesus." I went home and I had a random pregnancy test in a gym bag.
'I felt crazy for taking the pregnancy test in itself, because it's like, "How can you have a baby if your partner is infertile?"
'I took it and it said "pregnant". I didn't believe it at first. I felt very blessed and lucky.
Alicia, who was four weeks along, says she believes reducing the stress around trying for a baby and focusing on the wedding instead helped 'reverse' their fertility issues.
'I think feeling more positive and us not being so stressed helped us to fall pregnant,' she said.
'It took us so long to conceive so yes, [being more positive] did probably have a role, but it's crazy that you can reverse infertility. It's unheard of, really.'
Truck driver Levi said he was 'the happiest man alive' when he found out that Alicia was pregnant.
Levi said: 'It was quite surreal when I found out she was pregnant.
'I was over the moon but I was quite scared to get too excited because of all of the news I'd had about not being able to have children.
'It was a mixed emotion of very joyful but very nervous to make sure that she was pregnant, so she did another test. I was the happiest man alive.'
The couple's son, Zen Delvin-Attille Hughes Brown, was born on January 4, 2025, weighing 8lbs 5oz, or 3.77kg.
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