Australian couples are making IVF babies across the world

A Queensland couple have revealed the extraordinary action they took to have a baby when the odds were stacked against them.

The business of baby making became a whole lot more complicated than a quick roll in the hay for Aussie couples separated at opposite ends of the world by Covid lockdowns.

A number were forced to resort to the unusual step of sending frozen sperm across the seas to be implanted using IVF techniques.

“Because they couldn’t get together to procreate, they literally had to send the sperm or eggs and make the baby that way,” surrogacy agency Growing Families director Sam Everingham said.

“Many of these women had left child-bearing too late, and they suddenly got caught in a pandemic, and think they’re 38, they can’t afford to wait another year ‘til borders open.”

Mr Everingham said he was aware of sperm travelling from London to Sydney, London to Melbourne, Sydney to Los Angeles and Melbourne to New York in 2020 and 2021.

Research by Growing Families and Monash University — to be presented to an IVF conference this weekend — found during the lockdowns there was a 24 per rise in international embryo shipping compared to pre-Covid times.

Cassandra Martin and husband Ben with eight-month-old baby Evelyn. Picture: Supplied

Embryo and sperm shipping was even happening within Australia, with a 66 per cent increase in special packages shipped interstate.

“Many people had embryos in a city where they used to live, like Sydney, but they’d moved to Melbourne for example, or their surrogate was in Melbourne and because they couldn’t fly interstate for the transfer they sent the embryos to where they were living and had the embryos implanted there,” he said.

Baby Evelyn was born in Ukraine by a surrogate mum. Picture: Supplied

Growing Families works with cryo shippers that provide the specialised transport.

“They either go in a hand-carry service with a courier in liquid nitrogen or as sensitive freight,” he said.

Prior to the war, Ukraine was known as a “repro-hub” for international patients, providing legal surrogacy to heterosexual married couples.

Since the outbreak of the conflict, many patients have sought to move their embryos out of Ukraine to safer locations.

“We’ve been working with DFAT (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) on about 60 cases where we were helping bring infants home for Australians who had births during the war,” Mr Everingham, said.

“I’d have another list of about another 80 Australian couples who we know have embryos in Ukraine right now, and that’s a fraction of the total.”

The couple has 10 other frozen embryos stored in Ukraine. Picture: Supplied

Cassandra Martin and her partner Ben shipped sperm from Brisbane to Ukraine during Covid as part of a surrogacy arrangement that gave them a beautiful baby girl, Evelyn Hope.

The couple travelled to Ukraine to collect their now eight-month-old daughter in November and managed to exit the country safely, just days before the war broke out in February.

Mrs Martin said DFAT was messaging the couple and urging them to leave but they couldn’t because their baby’s passport took weeks to organise.

“It was probably one of the most stressful times of our life to be honest. And yeah, I think I still have a bit of PTSD from it,” she said.

Another mother in her Facebook group went to Ukraine for the birth after the war started and “she was hiding in bomb shelters and everything with the two-day-old baby and then had to flee to the neighbouring country,” Mrs Martin said.

The couple has 10 other frozen embryos stored in Ukraine.