Widow of Falklands hero tells of her two-year battle to save their frozen embryos
After her Falklands hero husband died in their bed, Samantha Jefferies had another traumatic shock – from the couple’s IVF clinic
Samantha Jeffries, the widow of a Falklands hero desperate to have his children that were frozen as embryos before he died, speaks of her hopes of motherhood. She endured a court battle with an IVF clinic to stop the embryos being allowed to perish
It wasn’t long after my husband, Clive, and I started seeing each other that I decided I wanted him to be the father of my children. Sometimes, somebody extraordinary comes into your life and you just know you want them to be a part of it forever. But I never imagined one day I would be standing in the High Courts fighting for the right to have those children, without Clive by my side.
My husband was a wonderful man. As practical and patient as he was thoughtful and kind. He was a complete romantic, the sort of person who would cut flowers for you from the garden without needing a reason to. We met when we worked together in 1999 on a neurology ward – I as an assistant psychologist and he as a nurse. At 11 years my senior, Clive had seen more of life than I had, and he was so confident. He had travelled around the world, volunteering his services as a medic in Nepal and climbing to the base camp of Everest. He had been to war, serving in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and only just survived when a bomb ripped through his ship, the Sir Galahad, at the height of the Falklands hostilities, killing 48 of his fellow servicemen. He suffered hugely from survivor’s guilt, but I think that after the Falklands, all of life’s little hardships and challenges seemed surmountable in comparison.
So when, after marrying in December 2007, we encountered problems conceiving, he remained calm while I worried about whether we’d ever be able to have a child. Clive was in his mid-forties by the time we got married, and longed to become a father. But he never let his emotions get the better of him. Instead, he held my hand through two failed rounds of IVF, coaching me how to cope with the loss and the pain when it didn’t work and I had to start the whole process over again. He taught me to stay calm, to think things through, to be logical rather than emotional. I suppose the Army teaches you that.
We were already discussing fostering, and I know that if Clive had lived and the third round of IVF had failed, we would have looked at adopting. We just liked the idea of giving a child a loving home.
I was cautious going into the third round – I had had a positive pregnancy the last time but miscarried eight weeks in. We decided to have two embryos implanted this time – Clive was a twin and we felt we would cope fine if both of them ended up being successful.
But on the morning of April 19, 2014, just a couple of weeks before we began IVF for the third and final time, my world fell apart. Clive had a massive brain haemorrhage while lying next to me in bed. We were having a lie-in after a long week at work – I remember we were talking about microwaves, of all things, and whether his parents, who lived near to us in East Sussex, might like our spare one. One minute he was talking and the next he was convulsing on the bed, his skin going from purple to grey. I began giving Clive chest compressions, trying to breathe the life back into him. I called his parents and an ambulance. But there was nothing anyone could do. The weeks that followed went in a blur. I had to come to terms with sleeping in the bed where my husband had died. I had to live in our house, which now felt so empty without him.
I felt angry, as if I’d been robbed. This wasn’t the life I had imagined for myself. Clive’s former regiment rallied round to support me. His former commanding officer rang me every day at 11am for the first two weeks after Clive died to check I was up and had eaten something. Veterans know about losing people, and they’re not sympathetic at all. I’ll never be able to thank them enough for not showing me any pity, but just quietly being there for me in those first weeks.
I hadn’t even been thinking about the embryos waiting in the clinic when the doctor called, around two months after Clive’s death, to say that we still had eggs in storage.
I think they were stunned when I explained that my husband had died. They said not to worry as I still had time. But then a couple of months later, in early 2015, I received a letter saying that, actually, they weren’t being legally stored and should really be allowed to perish as the two-year storage period had expired. We had initially agreed on a 10-year storage period, but this had been shortened to two years – without our agreement – because our NHS funding had expired.
I couldn’t get my head round it; my husband had just died. How could they tell me our embryos, half mine, half his, could now be left to “perish”?
The clinic acknowledged it was their fault for not telling me this before and offered to help me find a lawyer and pay for the legal fees. Still in shock, I wasn’t remotely ready to consider carrying a baby. But I knew that I might want to in the future. Even though Clive wasn’t here any more, I still badly wanted to have a child, his child – even if that meant raising it on my own.
In June this year, I sat in a hearing while Judge Sir James Munby talked about Clive. About his esteemed military service, how he had saved a man who nearly drowned in the Falklands in 1982. The judge had taken the time to find out what kind of a man he was and what kind of children we would have had together. I explained why I wanted to be given the opportunity to have my husband’s child. I wanted the court to know about his spirit, his sense of humanity, his strength.
Last week, Judge Munby issued a declaration in the High Court that the amendment that had been made to our contract with Sussex Downs Fertility Centre was “not valid”, and the embryos could still be stored and used lawfully. He said he was sorry that I had ended up in court as the result of mistakes of others. The relief was immense. After two years of hell, I have finally been granted the chance to use the embryos Clive and I so badly wanted.
I’m 42 now, so time is not on my side. After the year I’ve had I need some time to recover. But I know I do want to try one last time for the baby Clive and I so badly wanted.
I think about how this baby might look like Clive, and share his fitness, his love of the outdoors.
The thought of raising a child – if I’m lucky both embryos might be successful and I might even have twins – on my own is daunting, but I know these babies are going to be so well looked after by the incredible friends Clive has left behind.
And when they grow up, I’ll tell them about their brave, gentle father, and the extraordinary chain of events that brought them to us.
‘After two years of hell I can finally try for the baby Clive and I so badly wanted’