“Rest assured, I have taken none of this lightly.” Photo / 123rf
A widower, granted permission to use an embryo created while his wife was alive, is hoping to find a surrogate. This is his story.
“The year of 2018 couldn’t have begun more joyfully, with the birth of our much-longed-for second daughter,” says EF.
“Then it ended in the worst personal tragedy imaginable, when my wife and baby died. It changed the course of my life.”
EF, a softly spoken 45-year-old whose real name can’t be disclosed for legal reasons, lost his wife and 1-year-old daughter in a tragic event six years ago, leaving him a single parent to his remaining daughter, then 8.
Over the past two years, EF has been fighting a legal battle to continue his wife’s legacy in a different way – by getting permission from the Royal Courts of Justice for childbirth through surrogacy for their unused embryo they stored in a lab seven years ago, using his own sperm and his late wife’s eggs.
The chances may be stacked against him, but the investment banker and trustee has now been granted permission to use the embryo. Proceedings, involving the work of four lawyers, have been drawn out over 40 months.
It has been an emotional process costing thousands of pounds for him, but one that “was worth every penny”. If EF can find a surrogate who succeeds with a live birth, it would be the first baby born in the UK under these extraordinary circumstances.
“I never thought it would be possible to have the third child we had so longed for after my wife’s death six years ago. This first step feels like my wife smiling from the heavens,” says EF.
It’s an alarmingly macabre ambition for most of us to fathom; after all, who will really benefit? It’s an entirely reasonable question, EF acknowledges: “Rest assured, I have taken none of this lightly.”
To attempt to grapple, if not agree, with this widower’s motivations, it’s probably best to start with trying to understand the tragic couple’s story. They first met in 2005.
“My wife... [AB] was the cleverest person I’ve known – such a high-flyer that I’d read about her achievements in a national newspaper before knowing her,” he explains. “When we happened to actually meet, as we both worked in the same industry, she was 23 to my 25. She was thoughtful and modest, with a mind way beyond my own. But somehow, she fell for me, too.”
They married just three months after meeting, in the simplest of ceremonies.
Three years later, they were overjoyed when AB got pregnant – but soon after that, she miscarried. “We were devastated, but also knew this was common,” says EF. “It was only when reading her diaries later that I fully understood how hard she felt that loss.”
After several months of trying, in 2010, the couple – still in their 20s – happily welcomed their first child, X, a daughter, who was born three months premature.
“She weighed just one and a half pounds and nearly didn’t make it. My wife and I took turns to watch her tiny body 24/7, all translucent skin and big, bulging eyes, willing her to live. ‘She will survive, I know it,’ she told me.
“When doctors warned that she might have some form of disability, we weren’t scared. ‘She’s our daughter, we will love her and she will be fine,’ said my wife.
“In the end, she – as so often was the case in our marriage – was absolutely right. Our baby didn’t just survive, she thrived. By 2 years old, she taught herself to read, by 3 was using words like ‘judicious’.”
The doctors told the parents to take her to a gifted children psychologist for assessment, who pronounced their little girl “profoundly gifted”. It was all quite unexpected, EF admits: “We were not hothousing her; we just wanted a happy, healthy daughter. We’d gone from focusing on her survival to being amazed by her extraordinary skills.”
By the time their precocious offspring was 5, the couple – a warm, sociable and socially minded pair, who had both sat on hospital and educational boards – longed for a sibling for her. When it wasn’t happening naturally, they chose in vitro fertilisation (IVF).
“We had the available funds, and with both of us in our mid-30s by then, we didn’t want to wait,” explains EF. “We’d hoped to be relatively young, energetic parents. We both came from families of three, so that had always been our dream too.”
At a private clinic in London in 2017, samples of the husband’s sperm were injected into his spouse’s harvested eggs, resulting in two healthy embryos. As part of standard procedures, they consented to the embryos being stored for up to 10 years.
AB was asked to fill in a form about whether she consented to allowing any unused embryo to be used for medical training – and she said she did not. But she did consent to their being used for training purposes in the event of her death.
“In our faith, we see an embryo as a precious life form,” explains EF. “So she didn’t want the use of her eggs, or our jointly created embryo, to be used for training purposes.”
There was no other option – such as being used by a spouse after her death – in the official clinic forms. And nor was there any discussion about any posthumous use in the event of her death.
Quite naturally, the healthy, vibrant couple thought little more about the theoretical ethics, and were simply delighted to learn that the implanted embryo had resulted in a pregnancy. To huge relief, their second daughter, Y, was safely born in January 2018.
“It was the happiest day for our little family,” says EF, smiling at the memory. “Our eldest was delighted to be a big sister, and after all the stress of having a premature baby before, my wife and I now had a smiley, gargling delight – weighing six pounds! – chubby and strong.”
Two months after their baby had been born, AB’s mother suddenly died from a heart attack, and then EF’s 29-year-old brother was diagnosed with cancer. “We saw how short life could be and decided we must try and get pregnant with the remaining embryo soon – God willing – a third child would complete our family.”
They planned to return to the fertility clinic in the new year, after first enjoying a family Christmas.
It was during this festive period when tragedy stuck in the cruellest imaginable way. For legal reasons, EF is prevented from sharing any details surrounding what happened, should it identify him. But in a catastrophic event, his beloved wife and their 11-month-old baby were both killed.
“Half my family ... just gone,” says EF, who had to manage his own grief and that of his surviving 8-year-old daughter.
“I don’t know whether anyone can recover fully from that,” he admits. “But our families swooped in to support us, and I just focused on X and her wellbeing.”
“It was the darkest time. I desperately wanted to recall any final conversation with my wife to have another memory of her voice, or my baby’s face, just once more. I read her diaries over and over to feel closer to her.”
For many months, EF felt angry, wishing “they had been spared and not me”.
Ultimately, though, he had to get on with being a single parent, running the house, earning a living. He found some head space by running, and in a bid to find meaning, he studied for a philosophy degree. “I couldn’t remain bitter,” he says. “Life is a roll of the dice, I had to conclude.”
EF didn’t think hard about the embryo they’d always intended to use. He did so only when, in the summer of 2019, the clinic asked him to come in for an appointment and, once there, he “was told of their option to destroy the embryo, unless I do something about it”.
That’s when EF knew how strongly he felt that they should not.
“That visit made me realise that the very best way to honour my smart, amazing wife was to live as she would have. I made the decision to have the child she wanted.
“I couldn’t just let it perish. I believe that every living being has a soul – which enters the embryo at the point of conception. I had the means and the capacity to provide a loving home, and I had to do everything to make that life possible. However unusual that might seem.”
The first step was overcoming the legalities. Despite the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority opposing EF’s application, the judge’s ruling, delivered in private last week, was that she “fully supports the conclusion that AB wanted to use their remaining embryo to have a third child”.
It was the decision EF had wanted, yet as he admits: “This is just the start of the next chapter.”
Commercial surrogacy in the UK is illegal, “rightly, to protect against women being exploited,” explains EF.
“But without any family or friends being medically able to help, I now have to rely on an altruistic surrogate to step forward, who I cannot solicit. And then they would have to be suitable. And statistically, there’s a high chance the embryo wouldn’t implant. It’s a huge ask of anyone.”
While researching, EF has met some women who have previously been surrogates, and parents who have benefited from their generosity. “It’s a lifelong relationship which I’d love to have,” he says. “There is so much to learn and understand for me in this process.”
EF insists that if it hadn’t been in the best interests of his daughter X, he would have waited until she was at university. “But X was adamant she wants her sibling in her life as soon as possible.”
As well as getting the blessing of his daughter, EF also spoke to AB’s family, who agreed that using a surrogate would have been her wish. But EF knows there will be many critics – including his own mother.
“My mum will of course love and support me, but she’s challenged me. She asked me, is this just driven by grief for my dead wife?
“Of course I’ve asked myself, ‘Is it selfish to bring a baby into the world without a mother?’ But it takes a village to raise a child, and I have plenty of family love and practical support, and friends who all step in at times when my daughter needs a woman, not her dad.
“Is having me for a father really such a bad thing?” he argues. “People also say: ‘Meet someone else, you’re still young enough.’ But my wife was my everything. I’m lucky to have experienced that deep love once in my life; she was irreplaceable.”
While a baby would certainly bring fulfilment, he’s not naive about the potential struggles ahead.
“I’m not getting any younger. My teenager already says I’m ‘embarrassing’ and I’d be an older man at the school gates. Perhaps I have less time on this earth, who knows? But I run a marathon every month, I don’t drink or smoke and I look after my health. I know raising a child isn’t easy – I’m doing it! But even the hard times are all part of the joy. The struggles are normal.
“In life, I’ve come to believe that you’re only responsible for your actions – not the outcome. I need to sleep at night knowing I’ve done the right thing in my heart,” he says.
“For our little family, finding a surrogate for our baby is the right thing. And if it is meant to be, then an altruistic donor will emerge. And this will be the start of a new journey.”
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