As Angela Howard gazes tenderly at her sleeping ‘angel' she shakes her head in disbelief. After five years of heartache, she finally has her much-longed-for daughter, Nellie.

‘Children are such a gift, they're not something you simply acquire,' the 41-year-old primary school teacher says, gently stroking her baby's head. ‘It's been a long and tough journey to have Nellie, but I never wanted to give up.'

Grief can overcome a couple that experiences the tragedy of a miscarriage, and the anguish of wanting a child so desperately can become all consuming. Angela and husband Luke understand this only too well. Angela suffered nine consecutive miscarriages and underwent two rounds of IVF before giving birth to Nellie.

‘Most people who want to start a family think it will just happen naturally, that it's a right,' Luke says. ‘It's a privilege. There are a lot of people who go through fertility and loss issues. You're not alone and you need support.'

Love and loss

Baby Loss Awareness Week runs from October 9 to 15, so these devoted Auckland-based parents want to share their story about their personal tragedies and how they managed to keep their hope alive.

Angela married Luke, who works as a national sales manager, in December 2004. They had fallen in love later in life - both were 36 - so having a family was a priority.

‘I never wanted to have children without being in a stable relationship,' Angela says. ‘If we'd known then what we know now we would have started trying for a baby earlier.'

Tough times

The couple's plan seemed to have fallen into place when Angela fell pregnant after their honeymoon.

‘But about eight weeks into the pregnancy I started bleeding lightly,' Angela says. ‘I miscarried at around nine weeks. We were devastated, but we knew that many first pregnancies result in a miscarriage.'

However Angela lost another two babies in the next 12 months.

‘Not only was our age against us, but after every miscarriage your chances of carrying a viable pregnancy decrease. You think it will be fine next time, but after the third one we really started to worry,' Angela recalls.

Specialists at Auckland's Recurrent Pregnancy Loss Clinic took charge and helped support and guide the couple through the following five years. Rigorous testing ensued, including a sperm and egg compatibility test and several invasive procedures for Angela.

‘Everything came back fine,' Angela says. ‘The next year [2006] we tried again, but we'd get to around seven weeks into the pregnancy and lose the baby.'

By the end of 2006, the couple had miscarried another six times, with each loss making it harder for them to pick up the pieces and start again.

‘It was tough,' Angela admits. ‘I avoided people with kids. When people fell pregnant, it was hard to be happy for them.'

Angela's problem wasn't falling pregnant, it was keeping the baby. Doctors believed her womb lining was too thin for an embryo to inhabit, however drugs that are given to women undergoing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments can help thicken the lining.

On the couple's first IVF attempt, four embryos were harvested, but none were viable so the procedure was halted. On the second IVF cycle, the couple produced five embryos.

‘Two were transferred but they didn't work,' Angela says. ‘The next month they put another two in and they also didn't work.'

At this stage the couple decided to look into the possibility of adoption.

‘Adopting is a long and hard process. People giving up their children happens very rarely in New Zealand. We looked overseas but that was way out of our price range,' Angela says.

One last try

The couple pinned their hopes on their last fertilised embryo.

‘We just thought, "Well, we've got nothing to lose,"' Angela says. ‘We had the embryo transferred in August and it all took off.

‘You find out you're pregnant three weeks into the process with IVF. They scan at the six-week mark - and we had a heartbeat. Luke had tears rolling down his face. We'd never seen a heartbeat before.'

On May 19, 2009, Nellie was born via Caesarean section, weighing 3.83kg. Now nearly five months old, the healthy tot squeals with delight as she rolls around on her play mat, mimicking her devoted mum's loving smile.

‘Sometimes we stare at her in awe and think, "Wow, we're really lucky,"' Angela says as she admires the photographs of Nellie that line the walls of the family's home.

‘The last five years haven't been easy. There were many times where we've thought, "No, we can't do this anymore." But we stuck with it and we've come out the other side with our beautiful baby girl.'

By Caroline Botting

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