A 37-year-old woman and her husband are delighted as they welcomed their daughter after winning a competition on Facebook.
Katie Foster and her doctor husband Jon, who was born with a fertility condition, entered a competition run by fertility advice website Babble and won a free round of IVF.
The couple had their first child Elijah after they paid £16,000 for a private IVF after their first attempt was unsuccessful.
When the couple decided to have another child, they were not sure about spending £8,000 on IVF as the chances of conceiving were less.
Mrs. Foster said: “There was a lot to consider when it came to spending the money. As we had a child now, I had gone part-time at work and we had the added costs of childcare. Our chances of conceiving were not great so we didn’t know if we could go through the heartache of trying and it not working.”
But, when the couple came to know about the competition through a friend, they immediately took the part in the competition to get a chance to get a free round of IVF.
The couple never thought they could win the competition but when they got an email that they had won the competition, they couldn’t believe what they were hearing.
They were picked from thousands of people. Mrs. Foster said: “I thought someone must be spamming me and it couldn’t be real. I just didn’t believe it. It took a few days and the clinic phoning me to confirm before it sunk in.”
“I was really, really surprised to get a positive result because I thought we couldn’t be lucky enough to have won the competition and then for this one round of IVF to have worked. We were so elated to find out I was pregnant,” she added.
Mrs. Foster gave birth to baby Abigail in October at Stafford Hospital. The baby is now six-week-old and is doing well.
Mrs. Foster said: “We joke about her being our ‘free baby’. Obviously, she was very much wanted and we would have found a way to have her somehow but to ‘win’ her was just amazing.”
“We couldn’t wish for a better gift for Christmas and cannot thank the clinic and IVF Babble enough for making our dreams come true. Words can’t describe how it feels to have completed our family.”
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