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It can give couples babies they so longed for but, as Justine and many others have found, the strain of treatment can tear relationships apart
For Justine Bold, it was only after three miscarriages, five gruelling rounds of IVF and years of financial sacrifice and anguish that she finally fulfilled her dreams of motherhood.
The moment she held her twin boys, Otto and Orin, in her arms, all the difficulties of her long journey were forgotten. ‘When they were born, I remember just smiling a huge smile and feeling so very lucky,’ says Justine, now 48.
Yet while Justine still feels lucky to have her sons, now nearly five, she also experienced a rather more unwanted side-effect of IVF.
When Otto and Orin were just 16 months old, her long-term relationship with their father broke down, partly because of the strain caused by undergoing fertility treatment. Since then Justine has found herself a single mother.
Last month marked the 40th anniversary since the first successful transplantation of an embryo grown in a test tube. Louise Brown, famously the world’s first...