CRACKED IT!
After years of IVF heartache, these triplets finally arrived when their mother was injected with... egg yolk
SARA Viard was willing to try anything to become a mother.
After five years of failed fertility treatment, she and her husband were no closer to their dream of having a family.
Then, on the verge of giving up, Mrs Viard agreed to have a controversial therapy – which involved being injected with the yolk of a hen’s egg.
This time, the IVF treatment worked, and she finally gave birth to healthy triplet girls, Charlotte, Emily and Elizabeth.
It’s a miracle that Mrs Viard, 46, hardly dared hope would happen.
‘It was the most amazing feeling when I finally held them in my arms,’ she said. ‘After a five-year battle, I was finally a mum at last.’
She and her husband Michael, 51, who had had a previous vasectomy reversed, started trying for a family in 2009.
After a year with no success they had their first course of IVF at the Care Fertility clinic in Northampton.
When the initial attempt failed, the couple were devastated. They had a further three attempts using frozen embryos, but each time they failed.
‘It was so upsetting,’ Mrs Viard said at their home in Milton Keynes. ‘Each time we started another cycle we were full of hope, and wanting desperately for this to be the time that it worked.’
The couple, both IT specialists, then had a fifth IVF attempt at a fertility clinic in London, using fresh embryos. This time, Mrs Viard had a controversial intravenous treatment called intralipid infusion, which involves using yolk from a hen’s egg.
‘I’d never heard of using egg yolk to try and have a baby before, but I was willing to try anything,’ she said. ‘We’d been trying for a baby for five years, and I didn’t know how much more we could both take.’ She had the treatment and then the embryo was implanted into her womb.
Two weeks later she had a positive pregnancy test, and the couple were delighted at taking a longed-for step to parenthood.
But just a few weeks later it was discovered that the pregnancy was ectopic, in which the baby grows outside of the womb.
‘It was heartbreaking to lose that baby, but at least we knew I could get pregnant which was a good thing,’ Mrs Viard said.
‘We’d had four unsuccessful IVFs so far, so to actually fall pregnant on our fifth attempt gave us some hope back that it could work.’ So the couple decided to have a sixth attempt at IVF – again using the hen yolk technique. This time, doctors implanted three embryos into her womb.
‘I did a pregnancy test a few weeks later and it was positive,’ Mrs Viard said.
‘It was an amazing feeling, but we didn’t allow ourselves to get too excited. We had been through so much heartache.’
A few weeks later Mrs Viard had a scan and found she was pregnant with triplets.
All three of the embryos that had been put into her womb had successfully implanted and were flourishing.
‘We never expected all of them to survive – we thought we may have a chance of getting pregnant with
‘Never imagined it would be a success’
one baby if we put three embryos in – but never imagined that all three would be successful,’ she said. The pregnancy went smoothly and the triplets, who are non-identical as they were conceived from separate eggs, arrived ten weeks early, in December 2013. Charlotte and Emily both weighed 2lb 15 oz, while Elizabeth was the biggest at 3lb 7oz.
The girls are now four and full of life and fun. ‘When I look at them now, they are my three little miracles,’ their mother said. ‘And it’s all down to the yolk from a hen’s egg. It really is remarkable.’