A woman revealed how she was left overjoyed when she finally welcomed her first child after struggling with fertility issues for more than two decades.
54-year-old Helen Dalglish from Glasgow, Scotland, is a strong and determined mom who had been trying for a baby for 25 years before she finally fulfilled her dream of becoming a mother.
As the Dennistoun-based lady explained, she spent a total of over $125,000 on IVF treatments and suffered 21 failed attempts to get pregnant before she finally received the happy news.
“When you get that little miracle at the end, you forget about the 25 years. I was looking down and the bump was getting bigger and I thought ‘am I dreaming?’” Helen says.
“Even now looking at her I can’t believe I’m a mum. It’s surreal.”
Recalling her life story, Helen recalled moving to Cyprus back in her 20s and trying for a baby with her husband when she was 28 years old.
When they failed to conceive, the couple underwent a series of tests until they were diagnosed with “unexplained infertility” and advised to consider alternatives.
In the following years, Helen and her husband gave intrauterine insemination a try before switching to IVF after several failed procedures.
Since only one IVF was funded by the NHS, the couple had to shoulder the expenses for the following twenty attempts before the seed finally took hold.
“Sometimes it got too much emotionally, physically and financially. Sometimes we stopped for a year or two. Because they said it was unexplained, we thought we’ll do some yoga, meditation, alternative health, because there’s nothing stopping us, maybe it’ll just happen if we forget about it,” Helen added.
“Every one that fails you’re absolutely devastated. It’s like a death. I would get down for a couple of weeks but then I would pick myself up and say ‘right, if you want this baby, get your act together.’ I tried to forget about the failed ones as if I’d started from fresh.”
While she managed to get pregnant three times along her journey, Helen suffered a miscarriage each time.
“What kept me going was I just kept seeing this baby. I tried to switch it off sometimes and said ‘stop punishing yourself and putting your body through this.’ Sometimes I would try and accept it, but then I couldn’t,” she expressed.
By the time she was in her 40s, Helen started to give up and finally agreed to use donor eggs. Unfortunately, all ten embryos that she received perished.
Devastated by the news, the woman decided to give her chances of becoming a mother one final try when she returned to Cyprus and heard about the Dunya Fertility Centre.
On her second attempt at the new clinic, Helen conceived and went on to grow a healthy baby inside her despite struggling with diabetes and pre-eclampsia on the way.
“When we came home I burst out crying. It felt like 25 years of grief trying to escape and caught me at a moment where I wasn’t expecting it,” Helen said as she recalled coming from the hospital with her baby clutched in her hands.
“It’s absolute heaven. She just keeps getting better. She seems the most placid, laid-back, happy baby. It’s almost like I waited so long and now I’m being spoilt.
“She’s a little darling and worth waiting another 25 years for.”
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