Couple spent £82,000 on IVF to become parents

A couple from Carlow, in Ireland, have welcomed twins after going through ten rounds of IVF and spending over £82,000

Teachers Amy and Gary O’Keefe desperately wanted a family of their own and spent six years trying.

The couple suffered three miscarriages after getting married and struggled to understand why they were having fertility issues due to their age – being in their 20s at the time.

Amy was able to fall pregnant easily but unable to maintain the pregnancy and the couple decided to go down the IVF route to have a family.

The pair worked extra jobs and saved up to fund private IVF treatment, and just as they were about to give up, they did a tenth cycle and it worked.

A few weeks after they got a positive result they discovered they were pregnant with twins.

Amy told the Daily Mail: “I knew they were in there, but now they are finally here, after all this time, it feels incredible.

“We were constantly living with the question of will or won’t we have our dream family, and we finally have closure.

“We have the happy ending we wished so hard for and can move on into our next chapter as a family of four.”

The couple has been married for 11 years and trying for a family for six years. But after suffering a miscarriage, they had a series of fertility tests. They were never given a formal diagnosis and were told it would be classed as unexplained infertility.

They began IVF and had two rounds that both ended in miscarriage

The couple continued to have IVF cycles throughout the pandemic and in November 2020 they had two embryos transferred with no expectation of them taking in what was their tenth round.

They were told that they could not test for two weeks, but Amy began to feel unwell after a week and thought she had just overdone it.

The fertility clinic would not test until reaching the two-week mark, so they went to their doctor who asked if they could be expecting twins.

Amy said: “After everything that we had been through we’d never imagine that we could have been that lucky.”

The couple had their first scan just before Christmas and were terrified that they would be told some bad news.

And they could not believe their ears when the nurse said she could see a second baby.

After the shock had died down and they told their family, who were all over the moon, the couple had a relatively smooth pregnancy.

At 37 weeks, Amy was induced and the twins, a girl Maisie was born weighing 5lbs at midnight on July 22, her brother, Jared, was born a few minutes after midnight weighing 5lbs 8ozs on July 23.

The babies are two different star signs as well as being born on different days.

The couple was able to take the twins home three days later.

Amy said: “Taking the babies home was the best feeling in the world.

“We finally got our happy ending after all this time.”

Did you have multiple IVF rounds to have a family? We’d love to hear your story, email mystory@ivfbabble.com.