Ruth: Havi ng IVF baby’s been a journey of joy, hope and fear
Tory leader on her dream of being a mum... and how she’ll call child Fionnuala if it’s a girl
RUTH Davidson has spoken candidly about her emotional IVF journey as she prepares to give birth to her first child.
The Scottish Conservative leader has revealed the gruelling treatment she endured in her bid to become a mother – and how she feared that ‘early onset menopause’ could end her dream of having a baby.
With only weeks left until she and fiancée Jen Wilson welcome their child, preparations for the new arrival are well under way.
This includes choosing a name, with Miss Davidson revealing that a daughter will be called Fionnuala.
Extracts from her new book, Yes She Can, were published yesterday in The Sunday Times – including extremely personal admissions about her journey to motherhood.
Miss Davidson, 39, writes: ‘I always thought that one day I’d quite like to have children, probably in about five years’ time – it was always a choice for another day. Then I realised in my late thirties that a family history of early onset menopause meant I probably didn’t have five years left.
‘Now there was a choice to be made, a decision to be weighed and an action to perform.’
She says that as a ‘gay woman’ becoming pregnant would not be easy, adding: ‘The “stop taking the pill and, whoops, surprise!” route of family planning has never been an option.’
Thousands of babies are born through in vitro fertilisation (IVF) every year in the UK, with nearly 70,000 women undergoing the treatment.
It involves several medications, including by injection, and a number of hospital procedures.
Miss Davidson describes the IVF process as ‘invasive, joyous, mortifying, fearful and hopeful’ – and shares a particularly embarrassing moment.
She writes: ‘There is a special feeling of wanting the earth to swallow you whole when you are led in a hospital gown to the room where an internal examination is going to take place by a nurse who decides to strike up conversation with, “I saw you on the telly last night, talking about the NHS”.’
Miss Davidson, who will become the first politician in the UK to take maternity leave while leading a party, reveals that as well as undergoing the invasive procedures, fitting them into her busy work life was difficult.
She writes: ‘There is also a particular challenge in trying discreetly to sort out the various appointments and treatments, while keeping up the pace of political leadership, so no one suspects anything’s going on.
‘It leads to some interesting situations, such as having to stab yourself in the stomach with hormone injections in the oddest places – including the toilets at Geneva airport on the way to the World Economic Forum.’
She also reveals she flew to Afghanistan to attend a charity event only hours after having her embryo implanted. Miss Davidson writes: ‘I managed to persuade my embryologist that it would actually be less stressful to jump on a plane to Afghanistan a couple of hours after the implantation procedure than go back to the office because I’d be sitting down, reading briefing notes and watching movies.’
She adds that this led to her and Miss Wilson joking that they should nickname her bump ‘Baby Helmand’.
It is understood that the real name the couple have chosen
‘Less stressful to go to Afghanistan’
for a girl is Fionnuala, and that they have yet to settle on what they will call a boy.
Miss Davidson, MSP for Edinburgh Central, announced her pregnancy in April and confirmed that she will go on maternity leave next month, with her baby due in late October or early November.
She reveals in her book her apprehension about declaring her pregnancy, ‘particularly with the complicating factor of my being in a same-sex relationship’.
She writes: ‘In fact, media and political responses have been overwhelmingly positive.
‘Perhaps this will make it easier and less remarkable for future female political leaders to start a family during their period in office, as well as showing that society is far less prescriptive – and far more accepting – of the different choices women make.’
Miss Davidson adds: ‘Still in the grey area of being pregnant but not having given birth, I have no idea how changing family responsibilities will affect the way I do my job.’ Her book offers insights into a number of other areas of her life, including the serious injuries she suffered after being hit by a lorry when only five years of age.
Miss Davidson also discusses her time at Edinburgh University – she began studying there in 1990, when she was only 17.
She says she was ‘not prepared for how lost’ she felt and reveals that, as a student from a state school in Fife, she was intimidated by fellow scholars from ‘posh private schools’. Miss Davidson writes: ‘The Edinburgh University I attended in the 1990s seemed populated by incredibly confident, loud and forceful students in their twenties who had all gone to posh private schools in the home counties.
‘They all knew each other, had completed A-levels, instead of Scottish Highers, and had done a gap year building orphanages in Tanzania. They all seemed to have money, cars and an unshakeable belief in themselves and their place in the world... If I’d known then that knowledge was not the same as intelligence, and confidence no substitute for ability, I might not have struggled so much.’
WOMEN hoping to be mothers are being given needless and invasive IVF treatment because their infertile partners are ignored by the NHS, an expert has warned.
Infertile men are not being diagnosed or looked after properly within the health system, said Professor Sheena Lewis.
And she said it was ‘absurd’ that women were being given IVF to tackle the problem.
Her comments come as the average sperm count of men in the west has fallen almost 60 per cent in a generation, scientists reported last year. They warned it could lead to the ‘extinction of the human species’. Professor Lewis said women routinely have IVF when there is nothing wrong with their own fertility, while male infertility is now the most common reason for couples in the UK to seek IVF. It also costs couples up to £5,000 on average when they go to private clinics.
Speaking to the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire programme, Professor Lewis said: ‘The woman actually acts as the therapy for the man’s problem. We are giving an invasive procedure to a person who doesn’t need it in order to treat another person. That doesn’t happen in any other branch of medicine.’
Experts say up to one in five men in Britain are ‘sub-fertile’, which means their sperm count is low enough to affect their ability to have a baby. The fall in male fertility seen in Western countries has been blamed on obesity, stress and chemical compounds such as bisphenol A in water bottles and inside food cans .
Professor Lewis, an expert in reproductive medicine at Queen’s University Belfast, said the failure of health services to focus on male infertility is an ‘urgent’ problem, adding: ‘Men are not being looked after properly, not diagnosed, and not cared for.’ A review of 85 studies published last year found the average sperm count of men from Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand had fallen by 59.3 per cent from 1973 to 2011.
Dr Hagai Levine, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said at the time: ‘Eventually we may have a problem, and with reproduction in general, and it may be the extinction of the human species.’
Some experts say GPs tend to offer IVF because they don’t know what other treatments or tests are available to couples.
In the programme airing today, Victoria Derbyshire spoke to a man whose wife underwent IVF.
He sought help from a private clinic and had surgery to treat varicocele – swollen veins in the testicles which often affect men with fertility problems. After the operation, which was cheaper than IVF, he and his wife conceived naturally.