We gave up our home to pay for IVF baby
Couple raise £10k after 6 miscarriages
AFTER suffering six miscarriages in four years, Jo and Adam Wiggins were willing to do just about anything to have a baby. In the end, they had to sacrifice living in their three-bedroom home to fund the dream of starting a family.
The couple rented out their £250,000 detached house for a year and moved in with family to save money towards private IVF treatment.
Now the gamble has paid off after Mrs Wiggins gave birth to their son, Max.
The couple had already spent £15,000 on medication to stop the miscarriages before they were forced to find another £10,000 for IVF.
Mrs Wiggins, 33, said: ‘We gave up everything to have our miracle baby and I wouldn’t change anything we did because without that we wouldn’t have Max.
‘Going through the trauma of one miscarriage was hard enough but after suffering six we were completely heartbroken. But I was determined to be a mother.’ The couple met in 2010 and
‘I was determined to be a mother’
NHS administrator Mrs Wiggins first fell pregnant the following year. But after just six weeks she collapsed and discovered she had lost the baby.
Over the next three years she became pregnant four more times but miscarried on each occasion – including while they were away on their honeymoon in Mexico after getting married in 2013.
Mrs Wiggins said: ‘It was supposed to be a really happy time for us but unfortunately it wasn’t and this gave us the push to look into the reason behind these miscarriages.’
A private specialist identified a high level of natural killer cells in her body. These were attacking the embryos by mistaking them for foreign bodies that posed a threat. She was put on steroids, malaria tablets and given an intralipid infusion – a mixture of egg yolk extract and soya bean oil – to bring the over-active cells under control and she fell pregnant for the sixth time in early 2014.
But this again ended in miscarriage and the couple then failed to conceive over the next 12 months. Tests revealed self- employed web designer Mr Wiggins, also 33, had less active sperm than normal. The couple, from Braintree, Essex, were living in one of the first areas to stop NHS funding for IVF and they couldn’t afford to go private on their incomes at the time.
They decided to rent out their house in February last year and move in with Mrs Wiggins’s parents. They saved £5,000 and were given the other £5,000 by fam- ily. Towards the end of last year two fertilised eggs were implanted and one developed. Mrs Wiggins said: ‘Thankfully, the IVF worked and at our 12-week scan we finally saw him. We both burst into tears and this was the first time we allowed ourselves to get excited.’
The couple moved back into their home in March this year and Max was born at 39 weeks on June 1, weighing a healthy 7lbs. Dr Hassan Shehata, director of The Miscarriage Clinic in London’s Harley Street, said: ‘Natural killer cells are part of our immune system to protect us from viruses and bacteria.
‘But our group has discovered when these cells are more active they wrongly identify pregnancy as foreign and attack, leading to a miscarriage.
‘By calming these cells with medication some women can achieve successful pregnancies.’