Grandma’s greatest gift
We all know about baby boomers helping their children buy homes. Now they’re footing the bill for something far more special — their IVF grandchildren
DAwN wilkinson loved her grandson from the moment he arrived. She heard his first yell from the delivery suite of the maternity hospital.
All newborns are precious, but Joshua was particularly dear to Dawn, 67, because without her financial help he wouldn’t have come into being.
A retired account manager, she paid half of the £7,000 bill for her only daughter Janine Emily, 41, to have fertility treat- ment and become a parent. Everything Joshua will ever be began with his grandmother’s generosity. She is, in effect, responsible for his very life.
‘He took half my savings, but I would have given every last penny I had for him,’ she says, when we meet at her house in Exmouth, Devon, where she lives with Janine. ‘I’m so blessed with my three children,’ she elaborates, looking lovingly at her baby grandson asleep against her daughter’s shoulder. ‘I wanted Janine to have the same.’
Dawn is not unique. ‘More people are having to access fertility treatment to have their family, and grandparents helping out is definitely something we’ve seen an increase in,’ says Susan Seenan, chief executive of Fertility Network UK, a charity which provides help and advice to those trying to conceive. ‘It’s not something we heard of ten years ago.’
Today, one in every 50 babies born in Britain is the result of IVF treatment. And six out of every ten IVF cycles are funded privately owing to long NHS waiting lists, the postcode lottery of IVF provision and cuts in fertility treatment.
But privately each IVF cycle typically costs between £6,000 and £10,000 (more in London clinics) — a huge amount for a generation struggling with financial pressures and job insecurity.
So grandparents aren’t just footing the bill to help their children get on the property ladder, they are now helping them to have a baby. The more comfortably- off baby boomers with
savings and company pensions are increasingly stepping in to help buy a baby — an often desperately longed-for grandchild.
‘It’s a human yearning,’ says psychologist Dr terri apter. ‘the same psychology that makes having and raising children special is not just parent to child, it’s also grandparent to grandchild.’
Having grandchildren is the next logical stage in life’s journey. there is a deep-seated longing to pass on genes — and to smell that sweet baby smell again.
and for many would-be grandmothers, there is fear mixed with longing. Fear that it won’t happen in time, fear your children won’t be able to have children — especially devastating if it’s your daughter who is unable to conceive.
Dr apter says mothers identify with the longing — that allconsuming desire, frustration and pain. they are also denied the intimacy of watching a daughter navigate pregnancy, childbirth, motherhood — as well as that bond with their grandchild.
‘Parents of a son can feel one step removed from their grandchild, because the son’s wife is the gatekeeper,’ says Dr apter. ‘But there is nothing between a grandmother and her daughter’s child.’
as these grandmothers’ heartwarming stories show . . . JaNet met her husband at a car maintenance course in mostyn, manchester. ‘ I didn’t learn to change a wheel but I ended up with a husband,’ she says.
that was more than 45 years and two children ago. Her daughter Kate, 39, who leads the design of an apprenticeship programme for British telecom, has not been so lucky.
‘I’ve had lots of mr Wrongs,’ she says. Her mother adds: ‘She’s wanted a baby for 20odd years and every time she dates someone, I’m thinking “oh maybe this is it”.’
Janet has a grandson from her son, but says: ‘We longed for Kate to have a baby as we’re so close and there’s something special about holding your daughter’s child. It was so upsetting when it seemed like she wasn’t going to have one.’
on march 30, 2014, mothering Sunday, Kate treated her mother to a spa day. ‘We had lunch and I said to mum, “I want to have IVF.”
‘It wasn’t so much a conversation about can you help me financially, it was more, I want to do it, will you support me, because obviously having an IVF baby as a single mum is not the norm.’
Janet says she was thrilled to bits. ‘We knew how much she wanted a baby, but we also wanted one as well.’ Kate’s father was also supportive. ‘He said she should have done it years ago, as she was 37 when she started. He’d also much rather she was on her own than with somebody who’s just a waste of space.’
Kate and her parents live just two miles apart in Winsford, Cheshire. Some NHS trusts offer single women fertility treatment, but not Kate’s.
So in october 2014, Kate went to a private clinic in Chester. ‘I realised it was not going to be cheap. each consultation cost £250,’ she says. ‘I had to be signed off by a counsellor to confirm I could cope on my own and that was another £150. Blood tests were £50 to £60 a shot.’
She opted for IVF with donor sperm. mega doses of hormones resulted in a harvest of 13 eggs. But the sperm was weak.
at that point they said she’d need to have ICSI ( intra- cytoplasmic sperm injection) where the strongest sperm is injected directly into the egg. Kate was given a choice: pay an extra £1,500 or stop the treatment. Kate wasn’t willing to give up.
Her parents paid £7,000 of the £9,000-plus bill. Janet and her husband have workplace pensions. ‘mine is only small,’ says Janet, ‘as after having Kate I left teaching and took my pension out.
‘We decided we’d rather help our children while we’re alive and this was the one thing Kate wanted. She could afford to buy her own car, and holidays, but not this.’
Luke was born on July 15, 2015. Janet’s monthly mobile phone bill hit a record £70. ‘I’d been phoning my friends during the birth as I was so stressed,’ she says. ‘Poor girl was going through agony.
‘We just love him to bits and are very much involved in his life,’ adds Janet, who looks after Luke two days a week, including overnight when Kate is working in London.
‘another plus is we don’t have to share him with other grandparents,’ she says.
But she is most gratified with the change in her daugh-
ter. ‘She’s like a new person. He’s her life now. Whereas work was compensating for the lack of a baby.’
And Kate says: ‘I owe them everything. I couldn’t have had him and I couldn’t cope now if it wasn’t for them.’
IF WE HADN’T PAID, THEN LITTLE LUCAS WOULDN’T BE HERE
lavinia HarDy, 64, is married to Keith, a retired quarrying expert, and lives in Chepstow, South Wales. She paid £7,400 towards ivF for grandson lucas. conceiving. ‘ She was desperate for a baby. All her friends were having babies and she’d get tearful and in a terrible state every month,’ she says.
‘As a mother it’s hard to see your daughter long for a baby and it not happen. My youngest son had his baby almost straight away and Sarah couldn’t. I had a granddaughter so it wasn’t my need to be a grandmother that drove me, but I could feel how upset she was.’
Sarah Brooks, a specialist health professional who works in operating theatres, is married to Gareth, 36, who works for a funeral directors. They live an hour’s drive from her parents, in Blaina, South Wales.
‘We see each other every week,’ says Lavinia, who also has two sons. ‘ Sarah and I were always shopping, always out somewhere. I used to say it will happen, and every month she’d say, no, and she’d get more upset about it.’
In november 2013, tests showed Sarah had a blocked fallopian tube and was facing early menopause. She and her husband would have qualified for free fertility treatment on the nHS — they don’t smoke or have children from a previous relationship and Sarah is under 40 — except that the eligibility criteria also dictates couples are a ‘ healthy weight’ with a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 19 to 30.
‘For Gareth to get to a BMI of 30 or below he would have had to lose weight, but he just wasn’t able to,’ says Sarah. ‘It made me pretty angry because he’s a sperm donor for a private clinic. Other people can purchase his sperm to have a baby, but I, his wife, wasn’t allowed to.’
In April 2014, the couple had one round of private IvF treatment funded by Gareth being a sperm donor at the clinic.
‘I left it a couple of months and then I said, have another go. I’ll pay next time,’ says Lavinia. ‘ We’re not rich, but we had savings and I just wanted to give her the chance.’
Sarah got pregnant on her third attempt — and her parents paid the £7,400 bill. Lavinia feels a unique bond with Lucas, who is nine months old. ‘If we hadn’t paid then he wouldn’t be here,’ she says. ‘And Sarah is so happy — they both are. They are so happy they’ve got him.’