The procedure, where an egg is fertilised by sperm in a lab then inserted into the womb, is not guaranteed to work but has done for many families across the world and has brought joy.
Full-time mum Anja, 38, lives in Stevenage, Herts, with plasterer Stuart, 50, their daughter Torance, nine, and four sons – twins Boston and Breeze, six, and twins Ever and Rain, two.
She says: ”Without IVF, we would never have been able to have one child on our own, let alone five. IVF is amazing and I’m grateful from the bottom of my heart that we were able to go down this route.
“Although IVF is hard work and very demanding, I only have to look at the children to see how lucky I am.
“I was 25 and we’d been trying to conceive for three years without success. We went to see our GP who said I was young, healthy and there was nothing wrong with me.
“Stuart’s sperm was tested, which came back normal, and we were told there wasn’t fertility funding available for a couple in our position.
“But we wanted to be parents sooner rather than later, which is why we paid for the IVF ourselves.
The initial investigation revealed I had blocked “Fallopian tubes and without IVF I’d never be a mum.
“We had Torance after the first round of IVF.
“A year later we decided to have another cycle using frozen embryos left over. It failed but we didn’t give up hope.
“We had another cycle using fresh embryos, but that failed too. We were beginning to think that we would never be able to give Torance a sibling but we decided to have another attempt.
“This time doctors used frozen embryos from two previous cycles.
Amazingly, I became pregnant and the scan showed two heartbeats. In reality, one twin was actually three years older than the second. As he had been conceived using the older batch of embryos.
“Three years after having Boston and Breeze, we tried again and conceived another set of twins, Ever and Rain, using embryos from a new cycle.
“When I look at them all I feel like the luckiest mum in the world.
I hope more women like me will benefit in future.”
