“Clinic gave us answers we didn't know we needed”
A pair of first-time IVF parents from Bristol credit work colleagues who introduced them to a fertility clinic where they got “answers we didn’t know we needed” for the arrival of their baby son.
Georgie Jones, a nursery administrator from Bedminster Down, was 28 when she and her partner David Hackett, a client manager in financial services, started trying for a baby, and she said she was surprised when nothing happened.
Georgie said: “After a year, a conversation with a work colleague who was going through IVF herself, made me think perhaps it was best not to wait too long before starting investigations, so we went to our GP.
“I was optimistic that an easy answer would emerge, but successive test results revealed no obvious reasons, and we wanted some peace of mind so we decided to pay for private tests.”
Those tests indicated that, like 50% of all couples who struggle to conceive, there were issues on the would-be dad’s side: in this case low sperm count and sperm motility.
Armed with their test results, the couple returned to their GP to ask about NHS treatment, but Georgie was told she wasn’t eligible because her BMI was too high.
“Not only would I have to lose weight, but I’d have to stay at the target weight for six months before treatment could start, which made me worry how long it would be before we’d be able to have fertility treatment,” she said.
“So I left that appointment determined to be healthier, and David and I decided to go for private treatment because of the timing issues.
“We hadn’t been overly impressed with our original clinic, and discussions with people we knew who had gone through IVF kept pointing us to Bristol Centre for Reproductive Medicine (BCRM) as the place to go.
“Everyone we knew who’d been there was singing their praises and had successful outcomes.
“After our first appointment at BCRM in January 2024 some new tests and scans revealed that I have polycystic ovaries - though not fully-fledged PCOS – which was probably impacting my fertility and at least partly responsible for my higher-than-ideal BMI.
“The treatment our consultant, Becky Davies, recommended for us was IVF using ICSI – where my eggs would be individually injected with a single sperm that had been analysed under a microscope in BCRM’s embryology lab and met the required standard.
“After I’d had the first round of IVF medication, the team managed to retrieve 18 eggs, and by the fifth day after the ICSI procedure they told us we had five healthy embryos, four of which they froze for possible future use and one that resulted, nine months later, in the birth of our beautiful son Finn.
“We are loving being parents and are so grateful to the team at BCRM, who took such great care of us, giving us helpful answers we didn’t know we needed and finding the solution to our problem.
“Becky Davies explained everything very patiently and clearly, but all the staff were amazing. Even the people we dealt with on the admin team were always so attentive: we couldn’t fault them at all, and we’re really thankful that our friends recommended the clinic to us.”
BCRM www.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.
