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MUMS WELCOME BABY SON

A same-sex couple who have made their home in Devon have become mums to a baby boy thanks to an inheritance from grandparents, the advice of friends and the skills of the team at Bristol Centre for Reproductive Medicine.

Beth, who is a nurse, and Ellie, a fitness manager, both now 30, met at the end of their vocational degrees in Edinburgh, relocated to new post-graduate jobs in Devon where Beth’s parents live in 2020, and in September 2022 they got married.

Ellie said: “We always knew we wanted children, and we asked the advice of a colleague, who with her wife has three children. This led us to attend an open evening at BCRM as this is where they too received treatment to conceive.

“BCRM is pretty accessible, even though it’s not on our doorstep, and we immediately knew it was the right clinic for us. We made up for the travel by treating ourselves to a Nando’s after every appointment - it became a bit of a tradition!”

The couple decided to go for reciprocal IVF, where one partner provides the egg via ovarian stimulation and egg retrieval and the other carries the baby. This had always been their plan if it was possible, as they wanted to both be involved as much as possible.

Ellie said: “BCRM insisted we had an appointment with their fertility counsellor and although we didn’t really feel we needed it, we were so glad we had it.

“It made us think hard about how to approach the selection of our sperm donor, and it really helped us come to terms with our different roles: Beth as biological mother and me as birth mother. It was quite an emotional conversation.

“Picking the sperm donor was the hardest thing. We looked at their medical histories first and wanted to choose one with my physical characteristics – height, build, colouring – so there was a fair chance our baby would look a bit like one or both of us.

“We had an anxious wait after our initial tests, but we’re both young and healthy and fortunately everything looked to be okay.

“Our consultant, Dr Chebsey, was fantastic, absolutely amazing. Actually all the staff were, whether they were dealing with our blood tests, consultations, scans, or the transfer. You couldn’t ask for nicer people.

“The team retrieved 19 eggs from Beth, and we ended up with 11 fertilised embryos.

“We couldn’t believe it when the first transfer resulted in a pregnancy, and consider ourselves to have been very lucky.

“I had a good pregnancy, and our gorgeous son Noah was delivered by C section on 16 April.

“We have incredible support from family and friends and were very fortunate to have an inheritance to help us pay for the treatment.

“We strongly recommend that any same-sex couple considering having a baby via IVF should attend one of BCRM’s free open evenings to find out what the process involves.

“The clinic runs dedicated open evenings focusing on people who need to use a sperm donor, as well as general ones, and you get to have a free confidential mini-consultation with one of their doctors, which was incredibly helpful.

“We couldn’t be happier with our little boy and look forward to returning at some point in the future for baby number two.”