Hidden 'Treasure' ensured safe cycling by Sharon
Guests at the party held earlier this year to celebrate the milestone of 40 years of IVF babies ‘made in Bristol’ included one family whose own IVF ‘baby’ is now 23 years old.
His parents were among many attendees who grabbed the chance to tell the team at Bristol Centre for Reproductive Medicine (BCRM) how very grateful they are for their support to have a baby at a time when it looked like that might not happen.
“Motherhood has been all I hoped it would be and more,” said dental nurse, Sharon.
She also shared her recollections of what it was like going through fertility treatment at Bristol Centre for Reproductive Medicine (BCRM) two and a half decades ago.
Sharon said: “Once we were parents, I think I forgot how hard those days were when we weren’t confident it was going to happen for us.
“There seemed to be babies everywhere we looked, with lots of friends and family reproducing and knowing they were finding it hard to share their happy news with us.
“Everything revolved around my monthly cycle, and every disappointment felt like the end of the world.”
Sharon married Steve in 1990 when they were 23 and 24 respectively, and the pair had always known they wanted a family.
They settled in Kingswood, started trying for a baby in 1994 and when nothing happened were given a referral to see a specialist at St Michael’s Maternity Hospital where they underwent investigations.
From the initial visit to their GP it was six years before their son arrived.
Their first course of treatment involved artificial insemination, of which they had several rounds.
Sharon said: “I remember cycling into work in Bristol back in 1995 with a phial containing a sample of my husband’s sperm tucked into my cleavage, and thinking that I mustn’t lose or break that phial.
“The prospect of having to explain what I was doing with it there in the first place was not appealing!”
Protocol was different 25 years ago, and Sharon remembers how difficult she found it - before she was pregnant herself - being surrounded by expectant mums-to-be in the waiting room at the maternity hospital when she went for scans to see how many eggs she was carrying that might be suitable for fertilisation.
The couple were trying IVF since they’d been told they had only an estimated 1:100 chance of conceiving naturally after a laparoscopy showed Sharon to have had mild endometriosis and tests had also discovered issues with Steve’s sperm.
In addition, Sharon was told she might experience an early menopause, which injected additional urgency into their situation, so when they had an unexpected windfall they decided to accelerate matters and pay for private ICSI treatment at BCRM.
Sharon said: “The treatment we received, and communication with the clinic was so good.
“Few phone calls have pleased me more than the one I received from them at 8am on a Sunday morning to say they had created eight viable embryos for us.
“In those days they used to transfer up to three embryos, which was what they did for me.
“Then we had the dreaded two-week-wait before we would know whether I was pregnant, and I can remember being up at 5am when the day arrived, so I could do the test before Steve went to work: I’d started cleaning the kitchen because I was too apprehensive to look at the results.
“But it was positive, and when we had our first scan and saw the flutter of Callum’s tiny heart it was so exciting, we were absolutely speechless.”
Callum was born in August 2001, and just after his first birthday his parents were delighted to find Sharon had conceived again, naturally this time, with his sister Georgia arriving in April 2003.
Callum says he is proud to be an IVF baby. His parents told him how he was created when he was seven, unexpectedly prompted by misinformation being shared with their son by one of his schoolmates who had said his parents were not his “real parents.”
Sharon said he accepted the true version of events behind his birth very happily and has always been prepared to talk openly about it.
BCRM www.fertilitybristol.com has one of the best success rates with IVF and other fertility treatments in the UK and is involved in innovative research covering a range of fertility issues.
