Annie

I first met Annie at our local hospital's pergnancy exercise class. She was a couple of weeks ahead of me which I didn't realise until we started talking as her bump was so tiny. She is also a foreigner like me and she is a bit shy although she has got a British husband and her English is way better than mine.

We became really good friends and our babies seem to like each other as well. We carried on going to a postnatal exercise class at the same hospital together. Her daughter is a lovely little girl always smiling. She is very clever with her hands and already knows a lot of words. Annie was worried that she started crawling late but she crawls wonderfully now, with ease and elegance.

Annie guessed that Lily was conceived by assisted concenption, but she doesn't know the genetic side of things, she doesn't know that we used PGD (Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis) in order to prevent Lily from inheriting her father's genetic disorder which would cause her cancer.

To be honest it was quite easy for her to guess, as

1. Annie is smart.
2. One of the other girls at the postnatal exercise class also had IVF and as she didn't know that I don't normally tell people that we had IVF she started talking about it. I quickly changed subject but perhaps it was too late.
3. Annie came babysitting for us and we might have left some of our million papers outside. They are normally on our desk or at the computer as we have to deal with them.
4. I also left some Clexane in our food cupboard and told her to eat whatever she would like to. I hope she didn't use the Clexane though. It is a blood thinning drug and is generallt given for IVF patients in order to increase blood flow to the womb after embryo transfer. I did not want to take Clexane, in fact I did not want to take any additional drugs only the absolutely necessary ones. I trust my body much more than any drugs and I am quite convinced that my blood flow is good enough. However at our second IVF-PGD cycle I was at risk of hyperstimulation and had no other choice but to use it.

Since finding out that we possibly had IVF she makes very funny comments. But I never encourage her. I am sure she would be absolutely nice and symphatetic about it but I don't want people to think about Lily as an "IVF-baby".

Once she said how really sad it is that we had to do what we did in order to have Lily. I thought of it long and hard afterwards and although IVF is far from pleasant it is amazing that there is a technique like this, especially when coupled with PGD. It is amazing for people like us with genetic problems and amazing for anyone who for one reason or other cannot have children otherwise.

Another time she asked if we were born by IVF. She caught be my surprise and I said I didn't know although I am pretty sure we were not. Our parents didn't even know we were twins until we were nearly born very early and our mum had to go to hospital. We were born two month early in the end but thanks to the modern techniques we survived and are absolutely fine. There were no regular scans like nowadays.

It is funny that people think that having IVF can be inherited. The first person conceived by IVF is Louise Brown. In interviews she almost always gets the question whether she got pregnant by IVF herself. What a silly question to ask! Of course not. She has respectable amount of patience and always answers nicely that no, her children were conceived naturally.

Although I had IVF with PGD myself I wouldn't want anyone from my family to have it, especially not my own daughter.