How Harry Gration’s IVF story helped us to have our own miracle baby after 20-year battle

As well as being inspired to try IVF after the Gration family’s own experience, the famous couple also guided another Yorkshire couple - who asked not to be named - through the process.

Yorkshire legend and BBC Look North Presenter Harry Gration who passed away last year, successfully conceived a baby via IVF at the age of 68 with his wife Helen aged 51.

And the couple they helped said the stigma which still exists around IVF today was one of the reasons why they were keen to remain nameless. Harry and Helen received hateful comments after it was announced they were having a baby thanks to IVF.

But speaking exclusively to The Yorkshire Post, they said: “The IVF journey is not only expensive, but it is exhausting, isolating and at times soul destroying. Harry and Helen gave us hope. We were tired but didn’t want to give up.

“We are indebted to Harry and Helen who helped us when we were lost. We’d travelled abroad, tried adopting and everything was taking forever or the doors were being closed.

“First their story gave us hope, then we asked if a mutual friend would put us in touch directly.

“They were so helpful in sharing where they had gone and the right doctor to use, and it worked.”

Helen said: “Harry and I always championed IVF and the chance it gave those of us desperate to be parents. We believed so strongly that, if you're going to put yourselves through IVF, you were going to be a pretty special parent.

“And so it was with these amazing two. They had seen our story and it seemed to send them some hope, which is why we all spoke about our experience and how it might relate to them.

Helen said: “I remember being very frank about the medical side of it all, how fit I had been going into it in order to give us the best chance.

“I remember speaking passionately about having a donor egg and how my adjustment to that aspect had actually been quick, sensible and emotional.

“That was an important part of our discussion. My baby was mine from the minute it entered my womb, just like with any pregnancy journey.

“I was fiercely protective and becoming a mum again in such a special way is something I talk about regularly now with our little one.

“It is not shameful. It is incredible. So my final message was that, should they feel they could do this, the doctors would be the only ones who could make it happen, but the outcome would transform their lives in every way they hoped.”

The unnamed couple fulfilled their dream when they gave birth to their baby earlier this year.