Baby joy at last for the mother who miscarried 18 times

EVEN after enduring the trauma of 18 miscarriages, Angie Baker never lost hope of starting a family.

For 13 years, Ms Baker's life followed a recurring, heartbreaking pattern – whenever she became pregnant, she would lose the baby within eight weeks.

Then, as her relatives considered advising her against trying again, her "little miracle" arrived at the 19th time of asking.

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Baby Raiya is now 10 weeks old, healthy, and, mercifully for her proud parents, sleeps soundly from 10pm to 6am.

"She's my little miracle," Ms Baker, 33, said. "I can't explain how I feel. I'm overwhelmed. It seems like a dream and I still have to pinch myself.

"She's perfect in every way."

Raiya was born on December 9 last year, weighing 7lb, and her arrival is testament to Ms Baker's perseverance.

Doctors had told her the recurrent miscarriages, which always occurred between five and eight weeks after conception, were "just one of those things", but she was convinced she must have a treatable medical complaint.

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"Emotionally it was a rollercoaster," she said. "Every time I got pregnant I was hoping this was the one and it wasn't going to end in a miscarriage.

"I never gave up. I was desperate for a baby so I persevered."

After 17 miscarriages, Ms Baker discussed adoption with her partner Lee Gibson, a martial arts instructor, but then a newspaper article inspired her to seek the help of Dr Hassan Shehata in 2006.

Dr Shehata, a specialist in recurrent miscarriages at Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "Eighteen miscarriages is a huge number. This is the most unusual case I've come across.

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"You're more likely to win the Lottery than have 18 miscarriages through bad luck. Therefore, there must be an underlying cause."

A specialist test, available only in Epsom, Liverpool and the US, showed Ms Baker was suffering from a fairly common problem, thought to affect about 15 per cent of women.

She had high levels of a subtype of white blood cell, known as Natural Killer cells, which were too aggressive and attacked the foetus after mistaking it for a foreign body.

Ms Baker became pregnant again after beginning Dr Shehata's treatment, which uses steroids, but her problems did not end there.

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During the pregnancy it was discovered she was diabetic and the high sugar levels caused by the steroids resulted in another miscarriage.

Her stepmother, Janet Nobbs, 46, said: "When she lost the last one after the diabetes even my husband Graham was asking me when I was going to have that all-important talk with her and recommend it's time to give up.

"But I said, 'Until we've explored every avenue I'm not prepared to have that talk.'

Angie never thought about giving up. She's an extremely private person as well, so the chances are she cried a lot more in public than she did in front of anyone else.

"We still look at Raiya and think 'Is this real?'"

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Dr Shehata, who sees patients from all over the world, said he had only read about one other case where a woman had had as many as 18 miscarriages before a successful birth.

He said one in five women would have a miscarriage, one in 25 would have two, one in 100 would have three, one in 600 would have four and one in 15,000 would have five.

His team, which has treated about 1,000 patients both on the NHS and privately since 2004, usually sees women who have suffered three or four miscarriages, although he has dealt with one woman who had a total of 13.

The laboratory equipment to carry out the testing costs between 150,000 and 200,000, with each test an additional 200.

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But the treatment itself – one 25mg tablet a day for two weeks before conception and 12 weeks after – costs just 20.

The treatment's success has encouraged Ms Baker and Mr Gibson, from Peacehaven near Brighton, to try to give Raiya a little brother or sister to play with.

Ms Barker said she used to be jealous of other women whose pregnancies progressed without a hitch, but since Raiya was born she has been revelling in motherhood.

"I absolutely love it," she added. "I enjoy every moment. It's so precious. I can't believe she's here and she's mine.

"(Her father) dotes on her. She's his little princess."

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