Mrs Roberts, now 66, spoke to the BBC about her journey to parenthood in the 1990s. She says after 10 years of trying to conceive, she discovered her fallopian tubes were blocked from when she had had appendicitis and then peritonitis.
“It was never going to happen naturally,” she says.
She was told by a doctor to try IVF and paid £2,000 for one round of private treatment at Bourn Hall, the Cambridgeshire facility, which was the world’s first IVF clinic when it opened in 1980.
“It was the only chance we had of having a family,” she says.
In Mrs Roberts’ treatment, 22 eggs were retrieved, 13 were fertilised and three were put back.
After just one round of IVF, in 1991 Angela and Martin Edwards’ dream came true and welcomed twin girls into the world.
Due to the stigma around fertility treatment Mrs Roberts says “I never told anybody that I was going through my IVF journey – only my close family, none of my friends knew.” Her twin daughters both grew up knowing they were born with the help of IVF.
IVF and how it can help with infertility
IVF is one technique to be able to have a baby. Eggs are collected from the woman’s ovaries and fertilised with sperm in a laboratory. The fertilised egg, called an embryo, is then returned to the woman’s womb to grow and develop.
With 1 in 6 people worldwide experiencing infertility, IVF has become an increasingly popular path to parenthood, with over 10 million children born since its introduction in 1978. However, IVF is not always successful and can be a physically and emotionally challenging process.
Success rates vary significantly with age, offering a 32% chance for women under 35, but dropping to just 4% for those over 44. These rates can improve with the use of egg donation.
33 years later one of Mrs Roberts’ twin daughters also went ahead with fertility treatment
Nikki Roberts, 33, had hormonal challenges as a child and unexpectedly became pregnant at 21, giving birth to her son, Fin, who is now 10 years old. After meeting her partner Liam, they spent two years trying to conceive. When they discovered that the NHS only provided stimulation drugs, Nikki sought her mother’s advice, asking, “What do we do?”
She opted for intrauterine insemination (IUI), describing it as “less invasive and more affordable.” IUI is a type of artificial insemination where sperm is placed directly into the womb during ovulation.
On her second round of IUI, she successfully conceived her daughter, Cleo, now three years old.
New film, Joy, being launched by Netflix is all about how IVF began
The upcoming film Joy, featuring Bill Nighy, James Norton, and Thomasin McKenzie, tells the story of three British scientists in the 1960s and 1970s who developed IVF, a process that was highly controversial at the time.
For Nikki, the film serves as a way to “highlight the struggles of infertility.”
Speaking to others in similar situations, she shares, “You might feel isolated because it’s not the natural way, that you were conceived in a lab, but it’s okay not to have children naturally. Get all the support you can.”
Her mother adds, “Without the work of those pioneers, we wouldn’t have our family or grandchildren. They truly made a difference.”
New IVF Film ‘Joy’: A Heartwarming Journey Through Fertility Treatment
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