Two Folkestone women are raising money for a special IVF treatment that will allow them to have a “miracle” baby which is “part of each of them”.
Sian Faye, 27, and her partner Bianca Johnson, 28, who both live in Cheriton, dream of having a child together as a sibling for nine-year-old Elsie-Mai.
Local nurse Sian: “We would love the opportunity to have a baby together, a brother or sister for Elsie-Mai.
“However this isn’t the most straight forward process in the world being both women.
“We started discussing different treatment options available about a year ago and we decided that now is the time.”
My partner and I flew from Illinois to a New York City fertility clinic in spring 2017 to thaw the 20 eggs I froze when I was 37 years old.
We felt confident we’d succeed, mainly because our doctor assured us we’d produce at least one child from my frozen eggs. And also because we’d bought into what we saw all around us in the media, like magazine covers featuring celebrities who’d given birth to twins after age 40, presumably via in vitro fertilization.
I think about this trip often, but particularly during National Infertility Awareness Week, which runs from April 22-28 this year and marks the one-year anniversary of our experience.
For many couples infertility treatment like IVF with donor eggs is associated with huge expenses, spending your lifetime savings, lifestyle sacrifice or even, in case of women, quitting their full-time jobs to begin treatment. However, beating infertility does not have to involve any of the above. There are methods to make the cost of IVF treatment more affordable and to earn extra money in the process.
For business-oriented people there are ways to beat infertility without straining the house budget. Infertility treatment like IVF may last from three months up to a year or even longer, depending on how many IVF cycles you are going through. This is plenty of time to think of and implement a strategy that will help you not only save money for future treatment but also create an additional income on a daily basis.
Access to NHS fertility services can be a postcode lottery, resulting in couples travelling abroad for treatment
The UK may have been the birthplace of in vitro fertilisation (IVF), but cuts to NHS fertility services have led some people to consider travelling across the globe for fertility treatment.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends three cycles of IVF for those who are eligible, but whether you get anything approaching this depends entirely on where you live.
A survey carried out by Fertility Network UK and Fertility Clinics Abroad found that patchy NHS provision and the high cost of private IVF were the main drivers for people travelling overseas. Spain, Greece, Cyprus and Eastern Europe are all popular, along with destinations further afield such as the Caribbean.
New parents are often in awe over their first child, and that is certainly true for Andrew and Courtney Reeves.
The Bend couple marvels at how much their son, Jon, looks like his father. They are amazed at how well he behaves on trips and how he sleeps through most nights. They have already taken their 5-month-old baby on family vacations to Utah and Hawaii.
But Jon’s presence is more a miracle than his good behavior. He was born through surrogacy, an arrangement in which a woman agrees to become pregnant and gives birth to a child for a couple, who will be the child’s parents. The surrogate carries an embryo created in a laboratory using an egg and sperm from the child’s parents.
Fertility treatment in the UK is more successful and safer than ever before, according to a report from the HFEA (Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority).
IVF is now 85 percent more likely to succeed than when records first began in 1991, said the regulator. Over 20,000 babies were born in 2016 as a result of more than 68,000 IVF treatments, an increase of four percent from 2015. The HFEA’s new report covers fertility treatment trends and success rates for the 2014-2016 period.
Priceless: Kristy and Craig Darken with baby Henry, born via a surrogate. Kristy described the process as akin to having all of the ingredients to make a cake, but baking it in someone else’s oven. Picture: Kelsey Mlekus Photography
BY the time Kristy and Craig Darken found out they were going to be parents, they had almost given up all hope of holding a child of their own in their arms.
It had been close to eight years of highs and lows, of hope and of devastation, as the Elermore Vale couple trod the testing track of having a baby via a surrogate.
But then, countless counselling sessions, IVF, two surrogates and 10 embryos later, a tearful late night phone call came from Kristy’s sister, Rebecca.
“She was crying her eyes out,” Kristy said.
“I thought she was crying because she knew it was our last try. I thought she was devastated. Then finally, she said, ‘I’m pregnant. It worked’.
The high cost of assisted reproductive treatment in North America is forcing many US citizens to look to other countries for high-quality medical care at a lower cost.
Fertty International. A modern clinic, for new models of the family (PRNewsfoto/Fertty International)
In 2016, nearly 1.4 million Americans travelled outside the U.S. in search of medical treatment, compared to 750,000 in 2008. Currently, medical tourism, or cross border reproductive care as the media have labelled it, is rising by 25% per year.
The primary reasons for these trips, according to a study conducted by the Task Force on Ethics and Law from the ESHRE, and published in the scientific journal Human Reproduction (Shenfield et al. 2010), is the difficulty in accessing certain treatments due to legal restrictions, long waiting lists, and thirdly, the search for high-quality reproductive treatment.
The main countries hosting these medical tourists in Europe are Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Switzerland, Slovenia and Spain. The fact that the latter has the most permissive legislation in terms of assisted reproduction, together with the European regulations on mobilisation of biological samples, and high medical and technical quality make Spain the top destination. It is also the country with the most egg donations.
It allows women to share the motherhood experience from the stage of conception.
Getty images
More and more lesbian couples are having babies thanks to a super cool fertility treatment known as ‘shared motherhood’. What’s cool about it? Both women are involved in the process, as one’s eggs are used, and the other carries the child. I know, science is awesome.
New research carried out by The London Women’s Clinic, has revealed just how successful and efficient shared motherhood fertility treatment is proving to be. So here’s everything you need to know about the process. Plus, a success story from a couple who’ve become parents this way.
Following the Feb. 6 legislative cutoff deadline for committee action on bills in their originating house, both chambers took up debate and voted on dozens of bills in floor sessions that lasted well into the night.
Lawmakers have until Wednesday, Feb. 14, to pass bills and move them to the opposite house for further consideration. Measures that don’t make it past this deadline, except budget-related bills, will likely be dead for this session.
Pune: The parents of a 27-year-old man, who died of brain tumour two years ago, used their unmarried son’s cryopreserved semen extracted long before his death to have grandchildren. Fusing the semen with eggs of a matching donor, doctors created embryos and transferred them into a surrogate mother’s womb.
The woman, who incidentally is the man’s aunt, delivered healthy twin baby boys two days ago. Experts, however, have raised questions about the ethics behind the procedure. The man was diagnosed with brain tumour in 2013 while pursuing higher education in Germany.
Tracy and John Papach with Jennifer Hirshfeld-Cytron. (Photo: Lisa Fielding/WBBM)
CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Tracy and John Papach of Evergreen Park have been married for 10 years. They’ve spent nine of them trying to have a child.
“Nothing was working for us,” Tracy recalled.
After several rounds of failed intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilization (IVF), they’ve already spent upwards of $25,000, and without health insurance, it’s been out of pocket.
Every couple hopes to hear their child giggling in the house, but sometimes their dream seems to slowly fade to a point that it starts to feel far-fetched. Science is offering many Assisted Reproductive Techniques but seldom medical issues with the couple obstruct the way, even after options like IVF, IUI, and ICSI etc. When these techniques fail, a couple has two final options left: Adoption and Surrogacy.
Single-mum Kellie-Ann Fleming and daughter Haileigh, who was conceived through IVF (Image: Daily Record)
She will never know her dad but little Haileigh Fleming has brought incredible joy to her mum. The four-month-old is Kellie-Ann’s miracle, conceived through IVF with sperm from a dead donor. The teacher, who took out a bank loan to pay for the treatment, has no regrets after failing to find a partner. She said: “Haileigh has got a huge personality and it is as if she already knows just how special she is. “I turned 40 just before I had her so Haileigh is the best present I could have wished for. She is my wee star, my tiny miracle and my greatest achievement.
Elouise and Paul King thought their dreams of having a child were over after seven failed rounds of IVF treatment, but after finding a surrogate the pair now have twins (pictured: surrogate Jen Taylor holding the twins, with Elouise and Paul)
A couple who went through seven failed rounds of IVF treatment before finally having twins through a surrogate have said they will ‘never know how to repay’ her kindness. Elouise King and her husband Paul, from Solihull in the West Midlands, thought their dream of becoming parents was over after a miscarriage in 2013 led to complications. Mrs King had undergone a surgical procedure to remove the foetus, but afterwards she was struck down with a rare condition known as Asherman syndrome which causes scarring of the cervix and uterus.
This year marks the 40th birthday of the first ever IVF baby Louise Brown. IVF has changed significantly since 1978.
In the early days of IVF, women had to be admitted to clinics for a long period of time for treatment while treatments such as egg donation, egg sharing, sperm sharing, specific fertility drugs, dedicated lab equipment, catheters, ICSI needles and many things taken for granted in modern day IVF treatments, were all unheard of in 1978.
