Mother's Day 2021: Women who became mums with help of IVF, adoption
For some the journey to becoming a mum has been an arduous one. On this Mother’s Day, we tell the stories of four women who overcame significant hurdles for the chance to enjoy motherhood.
NSW
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Becoming a mum is not always easy. Four women have revealed their stories on the journey to motherhood, from using a sperm donor to adopting. Happy Mother’s Day!
GOING IT ALONE
At 34, Audrey Ku, a successful engineer who had travelled the world, had not found a suitable partner.
It’s a common complaint among professional Sydney women who are too busy for the dating scene. But she could hear her biological clock ticking louder and louder.
“I was 34 at the time and quite a few of my friends had babies and we had the discussion as women about the fertility rate and egg quality dropping and it literally drops after 35,” she said.
“I didn’t have a partner, but I always wanted babies, so I decided to freeze my eggs in 2018.”
As another year passed, Audrey was reminded that there was also a long waitlist for sperm donors, so as a backup plan, she registered for sperm donation.
“In 2019 I thought it is going to be really hard to find the right partner, settle down and it might take four or five years because I’m not the type to rush in just because I want kids,” she said.
“So after a long think, I thought yes I can do this on my own, I have a good job, I have Mum and Dad and full family support.
“I thought it would be bittersweet and hard but I knew I’d love it. So I went down the sperm donor path.”
The next hurdle was a sperm donor shortage.
“Donor sperm in Australia is in short supply,” Audrey’s doctor, Anthony Marren, from Genea said.
“There are a limited number of Australian men willing to be donors, leaving options for our patients very limited with often long waitlists to access.”
So Audrey accessed an overseas sperm donor and did a fresh cycle of egg collection.
Two embryos made it through to five days and one was transferred, but unfortunately it did not take. The second frozen embryo was then transferred six months later.
On September 28, 2020, baby Madeleine Ku was born into the arms of one very grateful mum.
“Oh my god it was so amazing, the nurse popped her on the boob,” Audrey said.
“She is my daughter, I am an only child as well and it means I’ve got someone for me to look after and I’ll be in her life and her growth journey and share that with her. It is just amazing.
“Madeleine’s middle name is Kayla, in recognition of the beautiful young lady who explained the status of my embryo to me and wished me luck wholeheartedly before we went into the operating theatre.”
Audrey has a picnic planned for today, as well as a cake.
“Madeleine is the best present I could ever ask for,” she said.
“I feel so thankful to be celebrating Mother’s Day this year.
“To take the road of single mother by choice with a sperm donor is definitely a long thought-out decision, even though it is unconventional, but I’m so glad I took it.
“Maddie will grow up in a family filled with love. I think it makes me a better person and love the world again.
“I’m more generous now and more giving and more understanding of babies and toddlers and mums.”
BEATING THE GENE
Haely O’Neill, 32, thanks science for the gift of motherhood because without the option to eliminate the gene that sent her father blind at age 30, she says she would not have had children.
Haely carries the recessive gene for retinitis pigmentosa which has affected eight members of her dad’s family.
“I can say to you hand on heart I don’t think I’d be a mother today unless that science was available to us, because it was something my dad was very fervent on, he wouldn’t want us passing on the disease if we had an option to not,” Haely said.
“He lost his sight, diagnosed at 29 and by 30 he was legally blind and that was the year he became a father, he was in the prime of his life and things changed dramatically for him.”
Haely and husband Alastair O’Neill, from Drummoyne, decided on IVF with pre-implantation genetic diagnosis to test the embryo for the gene.
“In our family, eight males have been affected by retinitis pigmentosa over the past 50 years but I am the final female carrier,” she said.
“There was a lot of pressure to not have children and end it but I really wanted to be a mother so how do we make it work?
“By having IVF and accessing pre-implantation-genetic diagnosis (PGD) we were able to rid the disease entirely from our family. It was Dad’s wish to end this heartache in our family if
we could.”
The couple had three cycles of IVF and only two embryos were viable for transfer and by very good luck both resulted in a pregnancy and without the affected gene.
“I fell pregnant with Heidi in 2017, she was born in June 2018, a healthy girl and not a carrier. Then we had a second daughter Astrid in July 2020,” Haely said.
She hopes pre-implantation genetic screening can one day be supported on Medicare because it is very costly now.
“Mother’s Day is a special day for me, its bittersweet because I lost my own mother suddenly two years ago,” Haely said.
“Mother’s day is … one to reflect on the journey we have had with the friends and family and medical community and the scientists that rallied around us to support us in having a healthy child and it now means I’m a mum of two and I get to have the cheesy card and cup of tea in bed, but I’d also love to be celebrating this with my mum.”
COUPLE’S ‘SOUL CHILD’
Amy McDonald is celebrating her first official Mother’s Day today after officially adopting daughter Nirvana in June last year.
Mother’s Day was, in the past, a lonely day and a great source of pain, but now “it is a blessing”, the 41-year-old said.
“I just feel deep gratitude, she is my soul child, she is our daughter,” she said.
Amy and husband Ewan have been married for 16 years and at 30, their attempts to have a baby were marred by her ill health and endometriosis.
“We tried to conceive but it just didn’t happen and then I got quite ill with chronic fatigue syndrome so I had a full on health journey and endometriosis as well,” she said.
But IVF was not something either wanted to pursue.
“I have nothing against IVF, it’s a path for others, but for us, we decided that there were tens of thousands of children already here in foster care and needing a home, so went from trying to conceive naturally to adoption as our first choice,” she said.
On December 12, 2018, Nirvana, aged 18 months, was fostered by the Figtree couple through the Barnardos Foster to Adopt program.
“After you agree to a match and they tell you about the child, they show you a photo,” Amy said.
“When I met her it was instant love, I imagine if you gave birth, you are instantly in love and it was that same, but when I saw the photo before I met her I felt that as well. The depth of my bond with Nirvana simply a few months in could no longer justify the title of simply being her foster carer, as I felt deeply that I was her mum, and we had become an ever-bonded family.
“When she came home to us she was very open, we let her come to us, she asked me for the cuddles, so that was really special, she just settled in and I feel this family came together that was destined to be together to be honest.”
Nirvana was officially adopted on June 11, 2020.
“She is amazing, she is perfect and the ultimate child for us,” Amy said.
“She is healthy and smart and sweet and kind and cheeky and she has so much charisma and she is so loving. It is beautiful. I feel like I have been waiting for her, I feel she is my soul child and was always meant to be ours. She looks like us, she is our daughter.
“Mother’s Day was always a painful time, but I get to feel the gratitude very deeply now as a consequence, that is the gift I have now, motherhood is such a blessing.”
UNEXPLAINED INFERTILITY
Renee Hammond was only 33 when she and husband Alex started trying but nothing happened.
After a year, they tried IVF, but after all the stimulation cycles and countless daily injections, no eggs were available for collection. And there was no explanation.
“It was called unexplained infertility, it was awful just awful,” Renee said.
“When we started IVF I thought I’d go through the process and at the end I’d be pregnant. I had no idea what I was in for. The process to stimulate, millions of needles, blood tests, phone calls, appointments and then to have a scan and then I would go for egg collection and in my case there would be one or two eggs, or sometimes none.
“And then I’d end up with maybe one for implantation and never ended up with a pregnancy.”
At Genea IVF clinic, laparoscopic surgery found endometriosis and after removing the affected tissue, round five resulted in two eggs, and only one was viable and it became baby Hugo who is now three.
“He was a miracle and it was the biggest relief to have him, but we always wanted a sibling. We didn’t think it would be possible but we gave it a go anyway,” Renee, 39, said. But round six was again a disappointment.
“I got no eggs at all, so we decided treatment would stop or we would try one last surgery and one more round and that would be the end,” Renee said.
“I had a little bit of endometriosis come back, we did the round and we only got one egg and they put it in and by miracle, we got Leo.”
Elated with a miracle pregnancy, the 19-week scan for the northern beaches mum found a shortened cervix which meant a high chance of having a premature baby.
“So I had to go on bed rest for 10 weeks. I was holding on by a thread,” she said.
Leo is now 11 months.
“Mother’s Day means everything to me, the world, I never thought I’d be a mum and get that privilege and to be a mum to two is just amazing. I’m so grateful and very, very lucky. It was the most awful time and we ended up being the lucky ones,” she said.
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