Assisted conception

‘Parents should never make assumptions about how their children are going to turn out. Our parents certainly didn’t expect this’

The couples’ journey to conception took nearly three years, and in each successive year they trialed a different technique. Doing it the “natural way” just wasn’t an option.

At first the two couples and their friend Paulie spent a weekend to remember in Byron Bay where they followed the instructions on a home fertility kit, which involved a number of vials and something that looked like a turkey baster. “Paulie was running back and forth making everyone cups of tea,” says Emma “It was screamingly funny.” But it didn’t work.

Then there was a round of IUI (intrauterine insemination) in the hospital in Dunedin. That’s where the female partner’s blood is tested every day to ascertain when she is ovulating and the sperm is then inserted into the uterus through the cervix. That didn’t work either.

Finally Clinton flew to Phuket to deposit semen to be frozen for a round of IVF treatments and baby Hazel was conceived.

Now, five years after they first began the process they are trying again and hoping for a sister or brother for Hazel.

The biodome, a sophisticated greenhouse, was a wedding gift from Rodney’s parents; Tiffany the cat soaks up the sun while Rodney lounges on the deck; not exactly found under a cabbage plant, Hazel plays peekaboo among the broccoli leaves in the biodome.