Alice Evans and Welsh star Ioan Gruffudd were living the Hollywood dream.
The
two British actors met on the set of the Disney hit 102 Dalmatians,
soon became a couple and married. Ioan landed starring roles in
Fantastic Four and his own TV series, Forever, while Alice worked
constantly in hit shows such as Lost and The Vampire Diaries.
Yet behind the success was a secret heartache as they fought – and failed – to start the family they both longed for.
Today,
in a brave and extraordinarily candid account, Alice, now 44, writes
about the highs and lows of their desperate journey through IVF – and
issues a warning to the millions of young women like her who might be
tempted to leave it late to start a family…
Hollywood actors Ioan Grufford, left,
and Alice Evans, right, went through IVF to have daughters Elsie, left,
two, and Ella, six, right
I
ALWAYS knew I would have children. And by that I don’t mean I always
hoped or dreamed. No, I knew. Because having children – or so my
13-year-old self thought – was inevitable.
It
would happen, on schedule, after I was done chasing all the important
things I wanted in life: to become an actress, learn foreign languages,
live in France, find a man who loved me as much as I loved him, and,
obviously, meet Shakin’ Stevens.
It
was optimistic of me to want all those things, as I grew up in a very
ordinary family in an ordinary house in Bristol and went to a pretty
rough comprehensive where learning how to avoid being beaten up was a
skill that served you a lot better than planning a career.
But
I had it all planned out. By the age of 50, I would kick back and watch
my large brood of kids running around – so I’d better make sure I had
the money for that before I did something stupid like have unprotected
sex.
How
very wrong I was. The fact is that Ioan and I left it late – very late –
to start our family. And the worst thing is, it was deliberate.
Looking
back I ask myself how could we have been so complacent about the simple
facts of life. But that’s what they say: When you make plans, God
laughs.
So we found ourselves playing a traumatic and expensive IVF lottery game that we were lucky to win.
And
if just one person reading this makes a decision to start trying for a
baby at 33 instead of 36, or if a single woman makes enquiries about the
best way to freeze her eggs, then sharing my story will have been worth
it.
Until
I started trying for a baby at 37 life had been going according to
plan. I managed the acting and the travel parts of my goals, knocking on
doors until they finally opened, and slowly climbed the career ladder.
I also met my decent man along the way –Ioan – who did, unbelievably, turn out to love me as much as I loved him.
Grufford, far right, starred in two
Fantastic Four films in the mid 2000s, but is now part of his own fab
foursome with his family
As
soon as we’d established that we both felt the same way, we got
straight down to the exciting process of making the hordes of babies we
both knew we wanted.
Actually I just made that bit up. Of course we didn’t.
Acting
jobs are like buses – none come and then three arrive all at the same
time, usually shooting on opposite sides of the world.
Finding the time to chat on the phone becomes complicated, let alone finding time to… well, you know what I mean.
There’s never a right time to breathe that long sigh of relief that says: ‘I think I’m ready now.’
We
were delusional about a woman’s dwindling chances of getting pregnant
after 35. That’s not anti-feminist, by the way – it’s just the plain
truth.
The
whole of my 38th year was spent reading studies about fertility, taking
my morning temperature, planning ovulation graphs, standing on my head
after sex, and fastidiously avoiding tea, coffee, alcohol, pineapple
pizza and anything else I’d read about that might possibly prevent
pregnancy.
Each
month I excitedly ran to the bathroom at least five days before my
period was due with a white stick in hand, and waited, my heart beating
practically out of my chest for that second little red line to come up.
And each month it didn’t.
I
went to acupuncturists who told me they could ‘revitalise my eggs’
(b******t), a dietician who told me to cut out dairy (even worse – one
of the best long-term studies ever done shows drinking one to two
glasses of whole milk a day correlates with higher pregnancy rates).
Well-meaning
but ill-informed friends swore I just needed to ‘relax’, which, when
you’re trying to quell a rising panic, is kind of ridiculous.
Months went by but it seemed like years. I didn’t have a clue what to do or where to turn.
Mum
had passed away unexpectedly a few years earlier and Dad had a new wife
and new kids. My best friends had all done the sensible thing and had
their children in their early 30s.
Then one day I found myself reading The Stork Club, Imogen Edwards-Jones’ brilliant account of her struggles with infertility.
Next
thing I knew I was on the phone to her, sobbing uncontrollably; she
understood and told me: ‘Alice, go see a doctor. A real doctor.’
The couple met on the set of Disney sequel 102 Dalmatians in 2000 and went on to get married in 2007
Six
days later I found myself lying on a padded table with a large piece of
tracing paper over my naked bottom half, while a doctor slid a probe
the size of a small rolling pin into my nether regions to look at my
ovaries.
The
blood tests had already revealed that my healthy eggs were few and far
between, but this test – the antral follicle count – was the clincher.
Fifteen follicles (indicating the possibility of 15 eggs) was more or less what the doctor was expecting for somebody of my age.
Ten follicles would be about the lowest he’d need to do an IVF cycle with a decent chance of success.
We
stared a big screen on the wall that showed my magnified uterus and
watched open-mouthed as he started counting the black holes that
represented my follicles. I had eight.
It became a journey of decisions. A round of IVF would cost upwards of £7,000 and we had about a 20 per cent chance of success.
I’d
also mistakenly bought into the myth that the world is full of
orphanages with lots of unwanted babies desperate for childless couples.
In
fact, the waiting list to adopt a baby from China turned out to be
upwards of five years. The average expense is about £35,000.
Adoption
in the US is probably worse, full of hidden fees, false promises,
lawyers and shady agencies, and the simple fact is this: there are many
more desperate childless couples than there are babies who need them.
Adopting
was more expensive and even less likely to succeed than IVF. So there
we were – £7,000 and a 20 per cent chance of winning. Take it or leave
it. We took it. And we won.
Seeing
a faint red line one Saturday morning after I’d decided in my head the
IVF cycle had clearly not worked was one of the most breathtaking
moments of my entire life.
Ioan didn’t believe it. He said I’d been staring at it for so long that I was seeing things that weren’t there.
The
next day there was a slightly darker line (we’re still talking shades
of snow here) and the next one looked like it might be pink… until
finally there it was. A second red line, staring back at me,
unmistakeable.
They went through eight rounds of IVF treatment before Alice became pregnant with their second daughter
Extremely
high blood pressure earned me total bed rest for the last two months of
the pregnancy and then there I was, in a hospital bed, sweating and
screaming and writhing about – just like on television.
A mere 40 hours later Ella arrived, a 6lb 2oz lobster-red baby-alien.
Instantly none of my other plans mattered. This was the thing I should have done years ago. The only thing.
It
was as close to being in heaven as I’d ever get. Neither of us had any
doubt about the fact we wanted a second child, yet, despite what we had
just been through, the luck of being part of that 20 per cent went to
our heads and we thought it was OK to wait a year before starting the
whole IVF process a second time.
This
time our first cycle failed. As did our second. Our third didn’t even
produce any eggs to fertilise. Our fourth gave us a few to freeze.
It
wasn’t working. Finally, physically, mentally (not to mention
financially) depleted, we decided sadly that cycle eight would be our
last.
Elsie
Marigold Evans-Griffith was born on September 13, 2013. She has her
dad’s big brown eyes but not his unfeasibly long tongue, thank goodness.
I’m
writing now because if we’d started trying even three years earlier we
might have avoided everything I’ve just told you about.
If
you’re worried about not getting pregnant, go to the website
Path2parenthood.org, which also has a helpline. You can also reach out
to me on Twitter or Instagram @AliceEvansGruff.
I know how lucky I am. I won the lottery. I get to kiss goodnight to the two most precious human beings I’ve ever met.
My goal now is to get the word out. Don’t wait until it’s too late.
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