ONE IN EVERY 50 BABIES BORN IN BRITAIN IS THE RESULT OF IVF TREATMENT
‘WE KNEW HOW MUCH SHE WANTED A BABY – WE WANTED ONE TOO’
Janet mooney, 67, lives in Cheshire with her husband Bernard.
‘IF WE HADN’T PAID, THEN LUCAS WOULDN’T BE HERE’
Lavinia Hardy, 64, lives in South wales with her husband Keith.
Janet met her husband at a car maintenance course in Manchester. That was more than 45 years and two children ago.
Her daughter Kate, 39, who leads the design of an apprenticeship programme, hasn’t been so lucky. ‘I had lots of Mr Wrongs,’ she says.
Then, on 30 March 2014, Mothering Sunday, Kate treated her mum to a spa day. ‘We had lunch and I said, ‘I want to have IVF. It wasn’t so much a conversation about helping me financially, it was more, ‘I want to do it, will you support me’, because having an IVF baby as a single mum is not the norm.’
Janet was thrilled. ‘We knew how much she wanted a baby, but we wanted one too.’
Some NHS trusts offer single women fertility treatment, but not Kate’s. So in October 2014, she went to a private clinic in Chester. She opted for IVF with donor sperm. Mega doses of hormones resulted in a harvest of 13 eggs.
Her parents paid £7,000 of the £9,000-plus bill. Janet and her husband have workplace pensions. ‘We decided we’d rather help our children while we’re alive,’ says Janet. ‘And this was the one thing Kate wanted.’
Luke was born in 2015. ‘We are very involved in his life,’ says Janet. ‘Another plus is we don’t have to share him with other grandparents.’
Lavinia knew her only daughter, Sarah, was having problems conceiving. ‘As a mother it’s hard to see your daughter long for a baby and it not happen,’ she says. ‘My youngest son had his baby almost straight away and Sarah couldn’t. It wasn’t my need to be a grandmother that drove me, but I could feel how upset Sarah was.’
Sarah, 35, a specialist health professional, is married to Gareth, 36, who works for a funeral directors. In November 2013, tests showed Sarah had a blocked Fallopian tube and faced early menopause. She and her husband would have qualified for free fertility treatment on the NHS – they don’t smoke or have children from a previous relationship and Sarah is under 40 – except the eligibility criteria also dictates couples are a ‘healthy weight’ with a body mass index of 19 to 30. ‘For Gareth to get to a BMI of 30 or below he’d have to lose weight, but he wasn’t able to,’ says Sarah.
In April 2014, the couple paid for one round of private IVF treatment.
‘I left it a couple of months and then I said, have another go. I’ll pay next time,’ says Lavinia. ‘We’re not rich, but we had savings and I wanted to give her the chance.’
Sarah got pregnant on her third attempt — and her parents paid the £7,400 bill.
Lavinia feels a unique bond with Lucas, who is nine months old. ‘If we hadn’t paid then he wouldn’t be here,’ she says. ‘And Sarah is so happy — they both are.’
‘IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO HELP YOUR DAUGHTER, YOU DON’T THINK TWICE’ Susie anglesey, 66, a wine consultant, is married to alex, an artist. They live in oxford.
‘IT TOOK HALF MY SAVINGS, BUT WAS WORTH EVERY PENNY’
Dawn wilkinson, 67, a retired account manager, lives in Devon with her daughter Janine.
Susie remembers very clearly a dark day in spring 2011. Saskia, the elder of her two daughters with her ex-husband, had been having such bad periods she was taking a packet of painkillers every month.
‘She decided to get checked out with a laparoscopy,’ says Susie. ‘As soon as the gynaecologist walked in and I saw his face, I knew it was going to be bad news.’
‘He said both my Fallopian tubes were severely infected and I’d never conceive naturally,’ remembers Saskia, 38, a former primary school teacher. Susie was also reeling.
‘When you discover your daughter might be deprived of one of the greatest gifts, it’s hard to take,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t thinking about grandchildren, it was Saskia and her loss that was in my head.’
Saskia and her partner resolved to get treatment as soon as possible – so went private. ‘But we were clueless about what it would cost,’ she says. ‘When we realised, I discussed it with my mother and she said everything you’d want to hear: ‘Just go for it. I’ll help you financially.’
Susie says: ‘I didn’t see it as a sacrifice. If you can afford to do it you don’t think twice.’
By September 2011 Saskia was pregnant after one IVF cycle. Susie paid the £9,000 bill. And when her grandchild was due to be delivered at the Portland Hospital in London, she was close by.
Unfortunately when Elise was five months old, Saskia and her partner separated. Saskia went on to marry her childhood sweetheart, Gerry – a banker, and have another baby, Uma, 14 months ago, again with IVF (paid for by her husband this time). She says: ‘Having a family is not a privilege, it’s a right that everybody has.’
Janine was motherly even as a child. She went on to become a nanny, then a head teacher of a nursery school. And when she was 26 and married to a man she adored she felt it was time to have a baby of her own.
But in 2006, after four years of trying, Janine was diagnosed with endometriosis, where cells from the womb are found elsewhere in the body.
Janine’s marriage fell apart. Other relationships followed. ‘But none of the guys were interested in having children,’ says Janine. ‘I just thought it wasn’t going to happen.’
Her mother had a radical solution. ‘I suggested she try for a baby on her own,’ she says. So, in the autumn of 2015, Janine gave up the dream of a man, but not of a baby. She had just turned 40, too old to have IVF on the NHS. She found a fertility clinic online in Spain, where treatment was cheaper.
‘I told her I’d contribute whatever I could,’ says Dawn. ‘So, we agreed to pay half each.’ They only had enough money for one round of IVF.
In January 2016, Janine and Dawn went to the clinic in Bilbao. Janine chose to use donor eggs and donor sperm to increase her success rate. The treatment cost £7,000.
Joshua weighed 7lb 3oz when he was born last year. ‘I’ve never felt that amount of love,’ says Dawn, ‘It’s because I’ve been with him from the very start. He’s worth every penny because he’s my daughter’s first and only child.’