A young couple are now facing a 'race against the clock' after losing a baby girl on Mother's Day.
Elise Casey and her partner Callum Fishwick first went to the doctors in September 2021 after struggling to conceive naturally, LancsLive reports. They found that 24-year-old Callum has a low-sperm count, whilst 23-year-old Elise has low Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH) levels, meaning she will go into early menopause.
The pair were offered IVF on the NHS and Elise fell pregnant following the first round of treatment. But on Mother's Day this year, after a 'normal' 12-week scan, their 'miracle' baby Mollie passed away.
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The couple, from Accrington, now face a race against time as Elise could go into menopause as soon as next year. Elise said the pair felt positive when first offered the IVF treatment.
"We had numerous tests with the NHS, with our doctors at the local hospitals and they all had to be done before we set off for funding", she said. "As soon as the funding was sent and the clinic contacted us, we went for it straight away."
However, the Aldi worker's ovaries weren't responding to the medication, meaning she only ended up with one, good quality embryo. In the end, the embryo was implanted during the first round and first transfer of the IVF process, ending up being the couple's baby girl, Mollie.
She added: "It was definitely a miracle. So when the egg and the sperm are put together, you've got five days to wait and see if they grow enough to be put in basically.
"We had four that had all grown to the day five, but there was only one that was good enough quality. If they're not good enough quality, they won't transfer them."
Elise and Callum first visited the doctors about their concerns over fertility in September 2021 and had their first appointment with the fertility clinic in August 2022. This means it took the couple a year of tests and appointments before the process of IVF began.
With one embryo able to be implanted, Elise had the transfer on December 3, 2022 and 'everything was going well' and she was classed as a low-risk pregnancy. After her 12 week scan, Elise recalls everything being ok.
However, on Friday, March 17, she had just finished a shift at Aldi and felt very tired. That evening, whilst lying in bed, completely out of the blue Elise's waters broke.
"I rang the early pregnancy unit straight away and they got me in there to test to see if it was my waters that had gone, which they confirmed it was," Elise continued. "But, they had no one to scan me that evening, so I had to stay in hospital by myself, my partner couldn't stay with me.
"So I had to stay until the next morning, when they had someone in that could scan me. They scanned me, she was still alive but there was no amniotic fluid, at all. I was sent over to the delivery suite and I was put into a specific room for stillborn and early losses.
"I was told that basically, because I refused to abort her, I had to wait and see if I would naturally go into labour or if I could naturally carry her until 24 weeks." Doing regular checks on Elise, everything was stable, until a scan four hours later confirmed that her baby daughter had passed away.
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The next day was Mother's Day and Elise went into labour with Mollie. Now, months later, she is waiting for the post-mortem results to see if Elise had an incompetent cervix, or an infection that wasn't discovered.
After experiencing the loss of her daughter, Elise was told some other news about her fertility struggles. In the last year, her AMH levels have halved, meaning she could go into menopause as soon as next year - so having a baby is a race against the clock.
Knowing they don't want to give up hope, the couple have tried to go for another round of IVF, but since they've already gone through it once before, they're unable to try again on the NHS. As a result, their close friend set up a Go Fund Me page to raise money to undergo the treatment privately, needing around £8,000-£10,000 to do so.
But, in a stroke of luck, Elise and Callum have received an offer from a private donor, meaning they could have their second round of IVF sooner than they could have hoped.
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