LOTTERY OF LIFE
Nurse pays for IVF baby with £12k of her share in family’s £1m jackpot
FOR Rebecca Brown, having a baby months after a health scare was better than winning the jackpot. And the NHS nurse should know. She paid for the IVF for daughter Ethel from her share of a £1million lottery win. Miss Brown, 39, was urged by doctors two years ago that if she wanted children she should try ‘sooner rather than later’. The advice came after a smear test revealed precancerous cells in her cervix, meaning she might need a hysterectomy. As she was not in a relationship, she decided to have a baby by IVF and paid the £12,000 for two rounds of treatment from £250,000 she had won on the National Lottery. She used a sperm donor – and 7lb 10oz Ethel was born on Friday at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Nottingham, where Miss Brown works as an orthopaedic nurse. Cradling her baby yesterday, Miss Brown described her as ‘priceless’ and revealed she named her daughter after one of her favourite patients. ‘i like old-fashioned names,’ she said. ‘Ethel was a name i really liked, but i also had a patient called Ethel, who was a really cute, sweet old lady.’
Miss Brown, her mother Yvonne, 63, father David, 64, and sister Julie, 37, shared one of 27 £1million prizes in a special draw in August 2016 to celebrate Team GB’s 27 gold medals at the Rio Olympics. But in February 2018 came the medical advice about starting a family.
‘i’d never met anyone that i wanted to have children with and seemed content with life how it was,’ she said.
‘i had good friends and a close family and then we won the lottery and everything was wonderful.
‘But getting poorly made me realise i really wanted a baby. So i just went straight for it.
My dad said i needed a man and i proved that you don’t – you don’t have to be in a relationship.’
She was quickly matched with a sperm donor because she made few stipulations.
‘i don’t want to offend anyone, but i just said i didn’t want any gingers and i wanted someone of average height,’ she laughed.
Miss Brown, from Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, said it is likely that she would have gone ahead with IVF treatment even without lottery winnings to help her.
‘Ethel would probably be here, but not funded by myself, probably on contributions from mum, dad, sister,’ she said.
‘They would have helped me out. i would have gone through it. They knew how important it was for me.’
‘I realised I wanted a child’