Ollie and Gareth Locke-Locke have opened up about their "wild" surrogacy journey after their surrogate miscarried at six weeks.
The Made In Chelsea couple appeared on Good Morning Britain today, where they were interviewed by hosts Ranvir Singh and Robert Rinder about the reality programme returning to TVs tonight. During the chat, they also discussed their own heartbreaking surrogacy journey in a bid to become parents, and are attempting IVF again next month.
Ollie and Gareth found a surrogate last year and through IVF, they managed to get a viable embryo. However, tragically, the surrogate miscarried at six weeks and the pair were understandably heartbroken by their news.
They haven't given up though, and are planning to start again on the journey next month, as they shared on the ITV show: "We have had one failed attempt at IVF with a miscarriage and we are going again next month."
Ollie and Gareth hope them opening up about their own experiences with raise awareness of surrogacy and lobby the government to make changes to change the law as well as make it more accessible to all.
He said: "What we tried to do, is because the representation is so important and because we have a platform, we wanted to do this so publicly to make sure other people going through the same thing feel supported."
Ollie described their journey as "wild" as he detailed how hard it has been for them to try this route.
"It's been wild. We've had to go to Mexico because we couldn't get to go to America. We've had an egg donor from Brazil, willing it to work. Mexico went into lockdown. We had to get embryos flown to Cyprus from Mexico because we had seen the face of the egg donor," Ollie said as he explained the lengths they have gone to already to try and become parents.
Gareth then added: "By no means, don't get me wrong, we stretched ourselves to be able to do this. I think, looking at the law in the UK, it needs to be more transparent," as Ollie agreed and called for the law to change.
In a heartbreaking post at the end of last year, Ollie confirmed their surrogate had tragically miscarried.
"In early November our life changed in the most extraordinary and wonderful way, those two perfect lines shone through a pregnancy test telling us we were pregnant and Gareth, myself, our surrogate and our families were all ecstatic," he wrote.
"After a difficult year, a little bean growing inside the best person you could ever imagine was the most wonderful early Christmas present we could ever have imagined. Through the course of nature, at 6 weeks and 2 days it stopped growing and had gone."
The Miscarriage Association (01924 200 799) miscarriageassociation.org.uk supports women affected by miscarriage, ectopic and molar pregnancies. If you’re worried about a loved one you can also call the helpline which is manned Monday to Friday, 9am-4pm, or email info@miscarriageassociation.org.uk.
