MIRACLE BABIES: After Series of Failed IVF Attempts

Mayonnaise miracle babies! They'd endured 150 IVF attempts - and been told to give up hope. But after controversial jabs of egg yolk and oil, they're mums at last

She feared this was a moment she’d never experience. After seven failed IVF cycles and two heartbreaking miscarriages, Emma Rose had almost given up hope of ever being a mother.

But look at her now. As she gazes down at her seven-month-old boy, with his shock of brown hair, Emma, a 38-year-old HR director, from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, admits she still can’t quite believe little Theo is actually here.

‘My husband Tim and I had felt like we were running out of time, money and, most importantly, emotional energy,’ she says.

‘We’d had years of highs and lows, waiting for results, and all the while my hormones  were being messed about with. We were beginning to feel we had too many hurdles to get over to have a baby together.’

Motherly love: Emma Rose and her seven-month-old by Theo. She was able to conceive thanks to a controversial yet seemingly-effective treatment

Sarah McGinnis (left, with son Joseph) and Helen Waters  (right, with daughter Robyn) are now delighted mums thanks to a course of Immunomodulation Therapy, which costs £7,000 a cycle

Yet against all the odds, Emma’s dream was realised. And she attributes it all to a controversial new treatment being pioneered in Britain.

Untested, unproven and viewed by many doctors as a waste of money, it works on the premise that some women are actually immune to pregnancy: when an embryo tries to develop in their womb, their immune system goes into overdrive to destroy it as if it were an intruding bug or virus.

Extraordinarily, it is claimed it solves this by pumping women’s bodies with intralipids — a mixture of egg yolk and soya oil — which is believed to restrain a mother’s so-called Natural Killer (or NK) cells, and therefore make her more likely to sustain a full-term pregnancy.

Known as Immunomodulation Therapy, it costs £7,000 a cycle — £2,000 more than conventional fertility treatment.

Lisa Barley-Jones and baby Henry. After six-and-half years and £53,200 of failed fertility treatment, she admits she was ready to abandon their hopes of becoming parents - until they tried the new treatment

But high-profile midwife Zita West and leading fertility expert Dr George Ndukwe, who developed it, are confident it is worth every penny.

For since its introduction at West’s fertility clinic nearly two years ago, 50 women, with more than 150 failed IVF attempts between them, are now, like Emma, excitedly embracing the motherhood they assumed nature had denied them.

And for the first time, six of these women are sharing their stories with the Mail.

Collectively they spent 40 years and £150,000 in their quest to become mothers, and each swears that Immunomodulation Therapy worked for them. So much so Zita and George have been dubbed the Miracle Baby Makers.

Zita West, who has been a midwife for 30 years, teamed up with Dr Ndukwe to help her set up the UK’s first integrated fertility clinic offering Immunomodulation Therapy, alongside hypnotherapy, and other complementary therapies, in September, 2011.

Immunomodulation Therapy is said to work by flooding the bloodstreams of women with fatty acids which reduce the ability of the body’s NK cells to produce toxic chemicals.

These toxins can attack and reject the developing embryo as a foreign object. The fats are highly calorific — about 200 calories a dose, the equivalent of a Snickers bar — and have been likened to ‘getting an armful of mayonnaise’.

Administered via a drip usually twice before conception, and then three more times after, the treatment is thought to help the embryo implant and grow normally.

Alongside this, women are also recommended to take steroids, which further suppress the immune system, and blood thinners to prevent blood clots, which also can impede embryos implanting.

Emma and her husband Tim, 47, who has a building business, first started trying for a baby in March 2008. After several months, with no sign of a baby, their doctor recommended IVF, and Emma was surprised and thrilled when she got pregnant at the first attempt.

But then, at the 12-week scan on Christmas Eve, 2009, came the shattering news: she had miscarried.

The treatment works on the premise that some women are actually immune to pregnancy and when an embryo tries to develop in their womb, their immune system goes into overdrive to destroy it

Their story turned into a sadly typical tale of raised hopes and bitter disappointment, as they endured three years of fertility treatment, including intracytoplasmic sperm injections (ICSI), which involve injecting sperm directly into a woman’s egg, at a private clinic in Buckinghamshire.

It took a heavy toll, both emotionally and physically, and cost them £40,000.

There followed another heartbreaking early miscarriage in April, 2011, and Emma can still recall the conflicting, painful emotions on hearing her younger sister announce her own pregnancy. It’s a situation any woman who has struggled with infertility will identify with.

‘I am five years older than her — she is 33 — and I know she found it difficult to tell us. She burst into tears, and although I held it together well in front of her, both Tim and I were shell-shocked.

‘I wanted to be a good sister and aunt, but at that point I questioned if I could be if I wasn’t going to be a mother myself.’

Reeta Tora with twins Sasha and Zahra. Before the treatment she had six miscarriages in the space of seven years

Their consultant, she admits, was ready to write them off. ‘He told us: “I don’t know where to go next”. We asked him about the new Immunomodulation Therapy because we’d read about it, but he told us we’d be wasting our money.’

Undaunted, Emma’s own investigations led her to Dr Ndukwe at Zita West’s clinic. ‘I had a strong feeling my body was fighting against the embryos that were being transferred. We always produced lots of embryos, it was that they struggled to progress,’ says Emma.

Dr Ndukwe’s test showed she had high NK cells and he recommended the Immunomodulation Therapy and changes in diet and lifestyle.

Emma says: ‘I remember Tim said to him: “Look, George, I can’t watch my wife go through any more. If it’s not going to work for us, tell us.” George looked at me and said: “Emma, you are going to be a mum.”

‘Afterwards, we sat in the car crying and I said: “What are we crying for?” And Tim said: “That guy’s going to do it for us.” ’

So, with renewed hope they decided to have one last round of IVF with George. As well as the normal ICSI process, throughout the pregnancy Emma took steroids, had blood-thinning injections, high doses of progesterone (the  hormone which naturally supports pregnancy), the intralipids and vitamin D.

On Zita’s recommendation, she ate more healthily, had acupuncture, took supplements and tried to live as stress-free a life as possible.

Emma found out she was pregnant in early April, 2012, but it wasn’t until her 20-week scan, when the couple discovered they were having a boy, that Emma finally began to believe that she just might become a mother.

‘When I felt my son kick for the first time I finally thought of him as a baby, rather than an embryo,’  she says.

When Theo was born on November 28 last year, Emma was overwhelmed. ‘After all this time, I had a baby in my arms,’ she says.

‘George was the only one giving us hope and, even if it is a controversial treatment, what he said about the immune issues really resonated with me.’

Dr Ndukwe admits the treatment is considered unproven, but success stories like those of Emma convince him of its validity. ‘Immunomodulation Therapy is still considered controversial because, in medicine, you need large controlled and randomised trials to back any recommended treatment,’ he says. ‘That hasn’t happened yet, as the cost of that research is so high.

‘But the measure I look for is live births of healthy babies. That’s the evidence I want: that it works.

‘It’s very frustrating that some of the medical profession is waiting for some massive study and, in the meantime, a lot of women who need help aren’t getting it.’

Finally: Karen Dednum and Jenna. Karen struggled to cope with the sense of loss after each failed IVF treatment

Yet critics are still not convinced. Professor Lesley Regan, head of the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust at St Mary’s Hospital in London, says: ‘Immunomodulation Therapy has been an emerging field since the Eighties, when I admit that I, too, was very enthusiastic about it.

‘However, it simply hasn’t lived up to its expectations. NK cells certainly do exist, but we don’t know if they really do cause miscarriage. There are no clinically-controlled randomised studies which prove the effectiveness of any of these treatments. ‘Considering its expense, and that these vulnerable women throwing their hope into it aren’t getting any younger, I would strongly recommend they look at the data available to them before considering it.’

Reeta Toora, 41, a financial adviser from Reigate in Surrey, experienced this resistance from the medical profession first-hand when, after seven years of failed fertility treatment, she asked her consultant about Immunomodulation Therapy.

‘I’d had six miscarriages in the space of seven years — from 2003 to 2011 — and the furthest a pregnancy ever went to was nine weeks,’ she says. ‘My body just didn’t seem to want to hang on to a baby.

Miracle worker: Dr George Ndukwe, who developed the treatment with midwife Zita West

‘I got to the stage where I almost started to accept that if I got pregnant I’d have a miscarriage. I started blaming myself, thinking it’s my body that’s the problem. I just felt so lost.’

Then a friend gave her an article about Dr Ndukwe’s work. ‘It made me think my immune system may be the problem. Getting pregnant wasn’t the issue for me, it was being able to see the pregnancy through,’ she says.

And so Reeta and her husband of 13 years, Suki, 47, an IT business analyst, decided to make this treatment their last go. It cost them about £10,500 in total and took a big chunk of their savings.

Blood tests showed Reeta, too, had a high number of NK cells. She was put on intralipids and completely changed her diet, eating a lot more protein and more greens, having no caffeine and very little sugar.

‘To be honest, because I had been trying for nine years I didn’t think it would work. We didn’t want to get over excited, just in case,’ she says.

The consultant at their local NHS hospital certainly didn’t share their excitement, and expressed concern about the blood thinning medication. ‘But I just thought: “It’s not like you’ve helped me,” ’ says Reeta.

At her eight-week scan, there were two little heartbeats there. She was pregnant with twins and Sasha and Zahra were born on Bonfire Night last year. ‘It felt amazing. I just felt so blessed to be having two — it meant we had a complete family,’ adds Reeta.

‘I’m just so glad we never gave up hope. No other doctor was able to help us the way George did and I was willing to try the treatment, even though it was controversial and experimental. And I am glad I did.

When you finally have a baby, all the heartbreaks are healed and you feel you can finally start  getting on with your life.’

That’s a feeling Lisa Jones, a 42-year-old PA from Alton in Hampshire, can empathise with. Even after a year of motherhood, she still can’t quite believe she’s a mother.

After six-and-half years and £53,200 of failed fertility treatment, she admits she and her husband Leon were ready to abandon their hopes of becoming parents. ‘We both decided we’d just keep going until it worked — or until we were ready to give up,’ says Lisa.

‘And I have to admit I was getting to that point,

‘It is an odd thing, infertility — a lonely journey where others often don’t know what to say to you. Getting pregnant should be the most natural thing in the world, but your body is failing you and you just don’t know why.’

Lisa found Dr George through the forums on website Fertility Friends. ‘I never worried about the drugs. It was more the emotional toll that concerned me,’ says Lisa, whose treatment cost about £10,000, including an extra embryo screening treatment to help improve her chances of having good quality eggs implanted.

‘I know it’s a controversial treatment,’ she says. ‘Some clinics just don’t think there’s enough evidence to show it works. And it is a lot more trouble and a lot more money. But I felt it was worth us going the extra mile after everything we’d been through.’

When two weeks after the embryo transfer, the nurse phoned her to tell her she was pregnant, Lisa promptly burst into tears of relief and happiness.

‘Each time the treatment doesn’t work you go through a grieving process.

'It didn’t help that we didn’t know why we couldn’t get pregnant.'

- Karen Dednum

Henry was born in June last year: ‘The joy of having my son has taken away all the pain of everything we went through.’

It was a desire to try something maverick after their NHS fertility clinic declared they had ‘come to the end of the road’ that led Helen Waters to Zita’s clinic.

‘Thank God for Google,’ says Helen, 34, a former charity fundraising manager from Gravesend, Kent, who is married to Danny, 42, a graphic designer. Their daughter, Robyn, was born in June last year.

‘It was as though I was under a dark cloud. Then at last I had Robyn and the world seemed bright again.’

Helen was put on intralipids, steroids and a blood thinner. ‘The cycle itself is a very tense time — you feel very unwell and on top of the physical side effects you’re worried it’s not going to work,’ she says.

Karen Dednum, 41, also struggled to cope with the terrible sense of loss after each failed cycle of IVF. She and her husband Nev, 39, a musician, tried for nine years and had five IVFs before baby Jenna was born seven months ago.

‘Each time the treatment doesn’t work you go through a grieving process. It didn’t help that we didn’t know why we couldn’t get pregnant. Doctors just couldn’t explain it,’ says Karen, who spent £15,000 on treatment.

‘In contrast on our first visit to Dr George, he said: “It’s simple, we’ll solve it.” We just felt he’d get to the bottom of the problem. I never worried about the controversial side, simply because I wanted a baby.’

But new mother Sarah McGinnis, 35, is annoyed the NHS don’t recognise the treatment and that some doctors are sceptical about its worth.

The Manchester recruitment executive has four-month-old Joseph after five, painful years of trying and has no doubt Dr Ndukwe and ‘his magical medicine’ as his clients describe it, are the reason.

‘It’s something the NHS never looks into. It’s frustrating that they didn’t tell us this was an option. I wish the NHS would offer it, even if couples had to pay towards it.

‘It may be a controversial treatment and there may be lots of doctors who don’t agree with it, but I trusted George and the treatment.

‘It helped me to have the one thing I always hoped to achieve with my life, to be a mummy, and for that I am forever grateful. There are no words to describe how you feel when your one life dream finally comes true.’

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