A couple whose IVF journey spanned 12 years recently celebrated the arrival of their miracle baby – born from their 12th and final frozen embryo.
Sky News editor Emily Deeker, 43, and BBC presenter Will Glennon, 52, have navigated a long fertility journey that began in 2012.
The Wiltshire-based couple welcomed their first child, daughter Olivia, three years ago.
She was born from their penultimate frozen embryo, giving Emily and Will a single shot at having another child.
Considering how long it took for Olivia to be conceived, they were worried that the egg wouldn’t take.
Miraculously, their ‘last chance’ baby, little Harry, was born in October – marking the end of their 12-year treatment that comprised several rounds of IVF.
Emily said: ‘When our daughter turned two we said to each other “We have got another embryo left sitting in the clinic in Bristol so let’s try it.”
‘But we absolutely didn’t think that it would end in a successful pregnancy and bring in the baby just because we had to do so many rounds of treatment to get our little girl.
Emily Deeker, 43, and Will Glennon, 52, from Wanborough in Wiltshire, had their first daughter Olivia three years ago from their penultimate frozen embryo but they wanted to give her sibling, which is when they had Harry (all pictured together)
‘If that 12th and final frozen embryo hadn’t matured to become Harry, we would have been grateful just to have had our beautiful Olivia after such a long wait, but I was already 42 then so if we were going to try, time was running out.’
She credited the ‘dedication and expertise’ of the doctors at Bristol Centre for Reproductive Medicine (BCRM), while adding Harry’s birth feels ‘meant to be’.
‘Olivia is besotted, and tells us constantly “Harry is my best friend”,’ the gushing mother-of-two described her daughter’s reaction to Harry’s arrival.
Emily said she was ‘desperate’ to be a mother and started the fertility treatment in Bristol when she was 30.
However, after many unsuccessful rounds of IVF treatment, Emily admitted she began losing hope her dream would ever be realised.
‘Will and I fell into the huge group of people who have ‘unexplained’ fertility issues,’ said Emily.
‘At first you think that IVF is going to be the answer to your prayers and often I think what you don’t realise when you start it is that it doesn’t work for everybody.
‘We learned somewhere along the journey not to get our hopes up and to manage our expectations – and we really trained ourselves to do that over the years.
After the many rounds of IVF treatment, Emily started to lose hope before she had Olivia and then Harry (pictured)
After their gruelling fertility journey, the couple decided to give their daughter a sibling from their last available embryo. Pictured: Harry and Olivia
Emily says that her daughter Olivia keeps telling her that Harry is her ‘best friend’
‘We were trying to have a family for 12 years in total and learned not to take anything for granted.’
Olivia’s birth after 11 years of treatment was nothing short of a ‘miracle’, Emily added.
‘So then we weren’t really expecting to getting that lucky again,’ she continued. ‘When we found it had worked again and then we did find out before he was born that we were gonna have a little boy, all of our dreams came true to have a daughter and a son.’
Emily, however, shared that she struggled to celebrate both of her pregnancies because she did not want to get her and Will’s hopes up.
‘I haven’t felt either time that I was able to enjoy the pregnancy,’ the Sky News journalist said.
‘I think long time IVF robs you the joy of pregnancy.
‘We waited a long time before we told people and it is only when the baby is here that you actually believe in it.
‘There’s loads of people like us that don’t have a diagnosis or reason to why it is not working because I think that if you know that there’s a problem in your head you can sort of understand it in a way.
‘You are always looking to try and find a logical explanation but, because in theory everything was healthy and fine with us, there was no reason why it was not working so it became a case of perseverance but then it did when we were getting older.’
On being a mother for the second time, Emily said she is ‘deliriously happy and tired’.
She said: ‘It is lovely to be the mum of a little boy and a little girl [and] just feels like it was all worth it, all of the pain and the perseverance over the years paid off and we are overjoyed.
Baby Harry was conceived from couple’s last frozen egg
Emily and Will’s daughter Olivia is pictured watching over her little baby brother Harry
Due to the couple’s long journey to have kids Emily struggled to celebrate both her pregnancies. Pictured: After giving birth to baby Harry
‘We wanted our little girl to have a sibling – and now she won’t leave him alone.’
She also noted how the fertility journey has strengthened her relationship with her husband Will, who works for BBC Points West.
She said: ‘My husband did all the injections for me over the 10 years and as a couple we always felt the need to keep going unless someone told us that it was not going to work.
‘I can see how it can divide you as a couple and for some people it marks the end of an healthy relationship – but for us it has really united us and pulled us together.
‘We were really private about it. When you’re in the thick of the process you don’t know what the end of the story is going to be.’
They are now gearing up to celebrate their first Christmas as a family-of-four, a dream that kept Will and Emily going throughout their IVF journey.
‘The thing that kept us going was the belief that one day that would be us,’ Emily said. ‘It is the determination that one day we would be able to celebrating with our children at Christmas – it is such a magical time of the year.’
BCRM is Bristol’s longest-running fertility clinic and helps people from south west England and Wales with fertility treatment for both private and NHS patients.
The clinic has one of the best success rates with IVF and other fertility treatments in the UK.
Emily says that Olivia is ‘besotted’ with her brother
Addressing other couples who may be grappling with IVF, Emily advised them to ‘be patient and keep trying if they can’.
She said: ‘We consider ourselves very lucky to be living at a time when fertility treatment is quite widely available and can produce such miraculous results because being able to have a baby naturally is not something everyone can take for granted.
‘If we had lived a few decades ago, before IVF was available, things would probably have been very different, but now not a month goes by without more developments in the field that directly benefit current patients.
‘So I would urge anyone with fertility issues to be patient and keep trying if they can because our own perseverance did finally pay off.
‘Although I appreciate we are among the lucky ones, given that people sometimes run out of hope, money or strength and can only go so far.
‘Obviously nobody wants to be going to a fertility clinic in the first place, but if you do have to go to one, you want to have faith in them.
‘It says a huge amount about the team at BCRM that we stayed with them throughout our entire, very long, IVF journey.
‘We trusted and believed in them, they cared for us so well, and their research is second-to-none.
‘We always felt that if treatment was going to work for us anywhere, it would work there – and in the end it did.’