Three generations, Lisa and Cassidy Sharp with Cassidy’ son Thomas Macartney, who Lisa carried and birthed after an embryo transplant.
Photo by
Les_Garbutt
Christmas and the beginning of a new year is always a special time for families but for the local Macartney and Sharp families, this festive season is one of their best yet with the arrival of baby Thomas.
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While the birth of every baby is a miracle, Thomas’ arrival was especially unique with his grandmother Lisa Sharp carrying him for his biological mum Cassidy and dad Corey Macartney after an embryo transplant.
“I found out when I was 18 that I was born without a uterus, but I have fully functioning ovaries, so I was able to go through an IVF cycle to make our own embryos,” Cassidy said.
“We looked at it all. All the options, whether we did a uterus transplant, adoption etc and then we had a look at surrogacy and thought, well, we'll have a look and see if mum could do it.
“If I can carry a baby for Cassidy, then I'll carry a baby for her,” Lisa added.
“We put a fair bit of thought into it, but once we sort of decided, we made the phone call to Melbourne IVF, and the midwives were fantastic.
New Yarrawonga mother and father Cassidy Sharp and Corey Macartney dote on their three month old miracle son Thomas this festive season alongside his loving grandmother Lisa Sharp who carried and birthed Thomas after an embryo transplant. More on page 3.
Photo by
Les_Garbutt
“They sent Cassidy emails with what each step we had to do was and one of those was to have a meeting with Dr Kokum Jayasinghe and that's sort of where it all started from.
“She was fantastic and guided us all through it, and her midwives were great. They're lovely women.
“The only apprehension I had was probably due to my age, because I was 53/ 54 when we started it so I just didn’t want to be 60 and having a baby.”
In Australia, gestational surrogacy is the only type of surrogacy that is legal and finding a surrogate is difficult with the most common arrangement being a mother carrying for her daughter as a women’s eggs decline with age, but the uterus doesn’t age as quickly.
Melbourne IVF, who offer a surrogacy program locally so patients don’t need to go overseas, have now celebrated helping 88 surrogate births since the program started in 2012, with this local case just the second mother/daughter surrogacy Dr Jayasinghe has been personally involved with and the very first for Lisa’s obstetrician Dr Stephen Cole.
While you would expect this pregnancy to feel different physically for Lisa than her previous three, the grandmother of two said this one was pretty much the same.
“It was easy, straightforward. I didn't have morning sickness, which was very good,” Lisa said.
“Everything went well until my waters broke early and really that was the only hiccup.
“Because of my age, he was going to be born early anyway.
“His full 40 week due date was October 18 but we were due to have him induced on October 7, but he arrived on September 26. So he ended up being about three weeks early.
“The birth was an emergency caesarean, with all my other births being natural births so that was a bit of a surprise.
“But the doctors were all really good. As far as I know, it went off without a hitch.
“We'd already agreed because with this process you go through psychologists and psychiatrists and the likes, Cass and I had already talked about as soon as the baby was born, he goes straight to Cass and Corey.
“He's not my baby. He's my daughter's baby and that's always super special.
“He's a dear little bloke.”
Cassidy said the whole birth experience was a bit of a shock but also her best day ever with the miracle baby just perfect.
“I think I was in shock for a full hour once he was born because we weren't expecting him so soon,” Cassidy said.
“Obviously too watching Mum have him was a bit scary because, you're in this room with all these doctors running around and all these things happening. All the emotions really.
“He's been a very cruisy baby, we've been pretty lucky there. He's just perfect.”
Both mum and grandma said that it’s a very exciting time having little Thomas around for the festive season.
“We're very glad that he's here now. It's been a big journey and we're just so grateful to have him. We’re very, very fortunate it worked out for us,” Cassidy said.
“For Cass and I, we're just hugely grateful to Melbourne IVF and everything that they did for us as well as Stephen Cole, my obstetrician,” Lisa added.
“If anybody came to us wanting to ask a question about it as they were looking to go through the same thing, we definitely recommend starting off with Melbourne IVF.”
