‘George made our dream of having a baby come true’
LATE SINGER GAVE COUPLE £9K FOR FERTILITY TREATMENT
A MUM has told how the late music legend George Michael paid for her to have IVF treatment, saying he would love her ‘miracle’ son.
George’s generosity helped bring Lynette Gillard something that she never dared believe could be possible – Seth, who’s now turning five.
Six years ago, Lynette was in a desperate place. She’d endured nine gruelling rounds of IVF over 13 years, suffering heartbreak after heartbreak when each one failed.
When her savings ran out, her partner, Nathan Hart, turned to TV game show Deal or No Deal in the hope of winning enough cash to try again. In the end they walked away with £3,000 – the cost of one round at that time.
But Lynette, from Westhoughton, Bolton, told how a sudden phone call transformed their lives.
For when the episode was aired six months later, George – who would have been 59 last Saturday after his tragic death on Christmas Day 2016 – was watching.
The show’s producers called her the day after. “They asked me, ‘Are you sitting down?’” Lynette, now 44, said. “They said ‘we’ve had a phone call, there’s been an anonymous donor, they want to give you £9,000.’ I thought ‘oh my god, that’s a lot of money!’
“I had no idea who it was from, they wouldn’t tell me. All I knew is that somebody wanted to help and that we had enough for another three goes.”
Determined to find a way to say thank you, she sent a letter to the mystery donor via the show and used the money to fund expensive tests at a clinic in London to find out why the embryos weren’t implanting.
Lynette was born with a rare condition called uterus didelphys, where the uterus, cervix and vagina are divided by a thin layer of tissue, creating two of each. On top of that, the tests revealed she had a high level of natural killer cells, meaning that immune cells meant to fight disease were actually attacking and killing her embryos. The good news was that it could be treated. In late 2017, a miracle happened – Lynette fell pregnant naturally, missing her period on Christmas Day. It would take almost a month for Lynette to pluck up the courage to take a pregnancy test though, such was her fear of suffering more heartache.
Then, on Boxing Day, House of Games host Richard Osman – who was a producer on Deal or No Deal then – tweeted about George donating cash for a contestant’s IVF. Lynette called the production company and Richard confirmed she was the person in his tweet.
Lynette’s son Seth was born weighing a healthy 7lbs 10oz at 4.05am on September 3, 2017 – nine months after George’s passing.
Seth turns five this year and is about to start school. Lynette said: “If I could see George, even if only for a minute, I’d tell him what an amazing person he was, how kind he was, how he touched the lives of so many and how honoured I feel to have touched his heart. My life finally started when I had Seth, and that’s all because of George.”