Despite the birth of her baby daughter in March, Jaimee Lupton hasn't forgotten her pledge to help couples who need to fund IVF treatment to conceive.
In this exclusive interview Jane Phare talks to businesswoman Jaimee Lupton about motherhood, why her fiance Zuru’s Nick Mowbray is “obsessed” with his new baby daughter, and why she wants to raise $1 million to help Kiwis who are struggling to conceive.
“Baby brain,” Jaimee Lupton laughs as an assistant, clutching a laptop, rushes into the Ponsonby cafe where we’re sitting, supposedly doing an interview but mostly cooing over Noa, her tiny daughter nestled up against her.
The laptop cover is covered in sparkly silver bling and not easily missed.
But Lupton, with other things on her mind, left the laptop at her nearby office when she rushed off for Noa’s paediatric check-up.
By all accounts this Zuru baby – her father is toy billionaire Nick Mowbray – has hit all her milestones and on the baby cuteness chart, scores top marks.
Life couldn’t be better and, in a “don’t-tell-Nick” moment, Lupton confesses she can’t wait to try for a second baby.
“See you in six months,” she quipped to her obstetrician that morning.
But despite the light heartedness, the devastating loss of another daughter at 24 weeks gestation in 2022 is never far from Lupton’s mind.
Last year she vowed to launch a foundation to fund IVF cycles for women and couples trying to have a baby, in memory of her late daughter - nicknamed Gingernut, a nod to Mowbray’s red hair and because Lupton ate gingernut biscuits during her pregnancy to combat morning sickness.
She could be forgiven for losing some of the drive to raise money for the cause in the first few weeks of Noa’s life.
Not so. If anything, Lupton says, it’s made her focus more on the end goal – raising $1 million by June so that people who cannot afford private treatment can have hope.
“I’d say it’s more of a motivator. To not get this opportunity, I couldn’t think of anything harder,” she says, stroking her baby’s back.
Since Gingernut’s devastating stillbirth, Lupton has connected with an online community who have shared their heartbreaking stories of failed attempts at becoming pregnant, miscarriages and losing babies in late pregnancy.
It is those stories that Lupton can’t forget. As her IVF bills mounted – an average cycle will cost $15,000 - Lupton knew she was extremely lucky not to have to worry about the cost.
It’s a privilege she doesn’t take for granted.
“My heart breaks to think that finances would be the barrier to someone getting their wish for a family.”
Matching donations dollar for dollar
Lupton and Mowbray launched the Gingernut’s Angels fund with a $500,000 donation and are now matching donations dollar for dollar until they hit the $1m mark.
In addition, Zuru will donate $1 from each pack of Rascal and Friends nappies sold in New Zealand to the fund.
“Lucky I know the boss!” Lupton quips.
In the space of three weeks more than $180,000 has been raised (including the dollar-for-dollar match), ranging from $5 and $10 donations, to $10,000 from the Evergreen Foundation and $25,000 from the Hugh Green Foundation. Lupton is also talking to a family who have indicated they want to donate $50,000, and Lumo Digital is supporting the cause with digital billboards around Auckland.
Among the donors are Gretchen Hawkesby, daughter of Auckland billionaire Graeme Hart, TV personality and alopecia ambassador Anna Reeve and her radio host husband Jay, former Warriors star Adam Blair and his wife Jess, Christchurch-born Bondi Rescue star Harrison Reid, and Sky Sport presenter Laura McGoldrick, wife of cricket legend Martin Guptill.
Liz Dotcom, wife of Mega Upload founder Kim Dotcom and mother to baby Kash, has also donated. It is in the former Dotcom mansion, extensively renovated in the past two years, that baby Noa now sleeps with her parents after the Mowbray Zuru siblings, Nick, Matt and Anna bought it in 2016 for $32.5m.
Fertility specialist Guy Gudex, executive director of fertility clinic Repromed wants women to not leave it too late before seeking help with fertility issues. Women under 30 have the best chance of successful fertility treatment, Gudex says.
By the time a woman turns 40, success rates have halved to about 20 percent, 25 percent at best.
Within a week of launching Gingernut’s Angels on Instagram, the site had more than 4000 followers, and the website more than 10,000 views.
Lupton is well aware that the majority of those followers will be women and couples trying to conceive and that she won’t be able to help them all. One in four people experience infertility and one in eight require some sort of medical assistance to conceive.
Two fertility clinics - Repromed and Fertility Associates - have come on board to support Gingernut’s Angels.
And two “Guardian Angels”, Repromed’s medical director Dr Devashana Gupta and the former chair and group medical director of Fertility Associates, Dr Mary Birdsall, will help select from the list of applicants.
Making the selection even more difficult, Lupton has stipulated that she wants anyone to be able to apply for funding from the foundation.
There will be no limiting criteria, such as age or BMI (Body Mass Index) that restrict who qualifies for publicly funded fertility treatment.
Applications for Gingernut’s Angels funding open on June 1 and Lupton can’t wait for the first baby to be born as a result.
Cradling Noa over her shoulder, Lupton talks about how rewarding it will be for her and Mowbray to have played a small part in helping someone else have a baby.
“There’s no greater gift I think than helping people conceive a child. I think there’s a real gap in society for it.”
Gingernut’s Angels is her (other) baby in a sense. Lupton runs the foundation, calling donors and hustling for more, and connecting with those who email or messaged about their fertility struggles.
Lupton, who suffered miscarriages, failed fertility rounds and losing Gingernut at 24 weeks, says she has difficulty describing how she feels being a mum.
“I can’t explain the feeling. It’s just overwhelming love. I knew it would be like that, but I didn’t know the feeling.”
The struggle to conceive Noa has made the experience more special, Lupton says.
“If it had come easily I wouldn’t appreciate the little things. I would have gone back to work sooner and I wouldn’t have cherished every moment with her to the same extent.”
The ‘obsessed’ dad
Similarly Mowbray is “obsessed” with his baby daughter and very hands on.
“It’s incredible. He’s always taking the baby from me or my mum to give her a cuddle. He’s changed more nappies than me.”
The besotted dad has reluctantly been away at a major toy show in Los Angeles this week.
“I’ve never had so many messages (from Mowbray) and him wanting to Facetime the baby. He’s just on the other end ‘oohing’ and ‘aahing’ over her. It’s very sweet.”
At barely a week old, Noa lay curled up asleep on Mowbray’s lap during a brainstorming session with his brother Mat, who was home from Asia.
When the baby was two weeks old, Mowbray suggested he take her to a Warriors game, an idea Lupton put an end to when she discovered Mowbray was sitting outside, pointing out that Noa would also need breast feeding.
A baby in the house has caused the couple to slow down, although the definition of slowing down is relative.
Noa, at three weeks old, was nestled in a front pack while Lupton hosted the launch of Osana Naturals, a range of hand soap, skin and haircare, in the Coatesville mansion’s wellness centre.
Two more product launches will happen in June - Chalon, a hand and body care brand with a scent created by a Parisian perfumer, will launch in Countdown, and in Walmart and Target in the United States; and a genderless haircare brand Being Haircare that will launch exclusively with Walmart. Lupton hints at another six brands set to launch by the end of next year, giving credit to her “amazing” team for making it happen.
She still fits in five to six hours of work a day, most of it on Gingernut’s Angels, in between her daughter’s sleep times with the help of a part-time nanny.
Lupton’s mother visits every second day to help and her sister Morgan is a regular visitor. After the interview, the blingy laptop will be put to work until Noa wakes up.
“I was a good multi-tasker before and anyone that knows me knows I can get through a lot in a day, but now with Noa that’s on steroids. The other day I was on a Zoom with our senior team for beauty brand planning, doing my makeup for a meeting I had next, and making a note of Noa’s nap times on my phone while she was having a nap strapped to me on her front pack. "
As if sensing she is being talked about, Noa stretches and then scrunches up her face in her sleep, a wind pain perhaps after the afternoon feed.
The expression, as the baby’s face turns red, makes Lupton laugh out loud.
“Oh you look like your dad, you look like your dad!”
Stroking her baby’s long fingers, Lupton says she knows she is lucky to have Noa.
“I don’t take that for granted. I can’t believe she is here, she is safe and she is mine.”
To donate to Gingernut’s Angels go to: https://gingernutsangels.com/
Jane Phare is a senior Auckland-based business, features and investigations journalist, former assistant editor of NZ Herald and former editor of the Weekend Herald and Viva.
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