Baby joy for cancer battle STV presenter
IT was a diagnosis that left her fearing for her life at the age of only 27.
But now television entertainment reporter Laura Boyd has revealed she is expecting a ‘miracle’ surrogate child ten years after she was diagnosed with cancer.
Miss Boyd, who is still fighting chronic myeloid leukaemia – a blood cancer that affects white cells – was told by doctors it was unlikely she would be able to carry a child to term.
However, the STV presenter has revealed that a family member offered to act as a surrogate so she could become a mother.
She said: ‘There is nothing I haven’t been able to do – except have a baby. Leukaemia hasn’t affected my fertility, but it’s unlikely I could carry a child to term. I found this out by coming off my drugs to see how my body would cope. Answer was: it didn’t.
‘The cancerous cells multiplied and I was told there was a chance that if I did get pregnant, the cancer could get so aggressive I could be forced to choose between my life or the baby’s.
‘My husband and I felt like we had nowhere to turn. But then the most incredible thing happened: a family member offered to be a surrogate. She’d carry our baby. We’ll have a daughter by Christmas – our own little miracle.’
Miss Boyd, who married long-time partner Steven Ford in 2017, also spoke of the difficulties couples face with ‘antiquated’ surrogacy laws, which were last updated in the 1980s.
She said she had been faced with the medical issues of ‘injections and tablets for me, injections and tablets for our surrogate’, plus ‘more paperwork than you can imagine’.
She described the six-week wait after birth to apply to switch legal parenthood from the surrogate to the new family as ‘a stressy situation that makes life needlessly complicated’.
Her comments come a month before legal reviews in Scotland, England and Wales are due to publish a paper on surrogacy law. She hopes to start the conversation early by speaking out.
She said: ‘Surrogacy is an incredibly personal matter. I hope this means I can talk about having a baby without having to explain why I don’t quite have a bump.
‘And it’s also something we will explain to our little girl as soon as she is old enough to understand: mummy’s tummy was too sick to carry you, so somebody else did and we are so very grateful they took such good care of you.’