Having waited nine years for their IVF baby to arrive, Sky News editor Emily Deeker and husband, BBC Points West’s Will Glennon, are urging other couples with fertility issues to be patient and keep trying if they can.
After welcoming baby Olivia into the world on 10 December 2021, Emily posted on Instagram Nothing worth having comes easy, together with a touching tribute to the team at BCRM, who worked so hard to enable her and Will to have a baby of their own: Thank you, Bristol Centre For Reproductive Medicine, from the bottom of our hearts.
“Will and I fell into the huge group of people who have ‘unexplained’ fertility issues,” explained Emily.
“We had 11 rounds of IVF, and a lot of exploratory procedures in between.
“Olivia was our next-to-last chance. We had 12 frozen embryos available to us, and she was number 11, so on paper she was not the strongest embryo.
“Will and I both had Covid in January 2021, just before we were due for an embryo transfer. The virus knocked us for six, and we had to delay treatment until the end of March.
“And then, finally, there was the positive pregnancy test. “Let’s be honest – you don’t want to be going to a fertility clinic in the first place but if you have to go to one you want to have faith in them, and we did have faith in ours.
“It says a huge amount about the team at BCRM that we decided to stay with them throughout our entire IVF journey, all nine years of it. “We trusted and believed in them. Their research is second-to-none – look at Valentine Akande’s work – and we had faith in their knowledge, their reputation and the amazing care they gave us throughout.
“To us, Valentine is peerless, and we owe him so much. And it was genuinely freeing to walk into the nurse’s room and have a good cry if I wanted to, while she held my hand. I know they were doing their job, but it always felt so much more personal and human than that.”
BCRM fertilitybristol.com is the longest established fertility clinic in Bristol, helping people from throughout the South West and Wales with fertility treatment for both private and NHS patients. The clinic is involved in innovative research and has one of the best success rates with IVF and other fertility treatments in the UK.
