Harry Christmas to new family of four
Three years after the birth of the baby girl created from their last-but-one frozen embryo out of 12, Sky News editor Emily Deeker and husband, BBC Points West’s Will Glennon, are celebrating the arrival of their “last chance” baby, little Harry – the happy ending to their mammoth 12 year fertility journey.
Looking forward to their first Christmas as a family of four, Emily said: “We love being parents so much, and when Olivia turned two last year we thought about the one frozen embryo we had left and decided to see if we could give her a sibling.
“If that 12th and final frozen embryo hadn’t matured to become Harry we would have been grateful just to have had our beautiful Olivia after such a long wait, but I was already 42 then so if we were going to try, time was running out.
“To be honest, our expectations weren’t high since it had taken nine years of treatment and 10 rounds of IVF before Olivia was born from our 11th cycle.
“But thanks to the continued dedication and expertise of the team at BCRM, here is Harry - and it just feels like he was meant to be. Olivia is besotted, and tells us constantly: 'Harry is my best friend'.
Emily and Will’s long association with Bristol Centre for Reproductive Medicine (BCRM) had led to them being invited to officially open their new Aztec West premises in April 2022, and featuring as guests of honour at a party earlier this year celebrating 40 years of ‘made in Bristol’ IVF babies.
Emily said: “We consider ourselves very lucky to be living at a time when fertility treatment is quite widely available and can produce such miraculous results because being able to have a baby naturally is not something everyone can take for granted.
“Will and I fell into the huge group of people who have ‘unexplained’ fertility issues. We began fertility treatment with BCRM when I was 30. I was 39 when I finally became pregnant with Olivia, 40 when she was born and 43 when Harry arrived.
“If we had lived a few decades ago, before IVF was available, things would probably have been very different, but now not a month goes by without more developments in the field that directly benefit current patients.
“So I would urge anyone with fertility issues to be patient and keep trying if they can because our own perseverance did finally pay off, although I appreciate we are among the lucky ones, given that people sometimes run out of hope, money or strength and can only go so far.
“Obviously nobody wants to be going to a fertility clinic in the first place, but if you do have to go to one, you want to have faith in them. It says a huge amount about the team at BCRM that we stayed with them throughout our entire, very long, IVF journey.
“We trusted and believed in them, they cared for us so well, and their research is second-to-none.
“We always felt that if treatment was going to work for us anywhere, it would work there – and in the end it did.”
BCRM www.fertilitybristol.com is the longest established fertility clinic in Bristol, helping people from throughout the South West and Wales with fertility treatment for both private and NHS patients. The clinic is involved in innovative research and has one of the best success rates with IVF and other fertility treatments in the UK.
