{"id":8091,"date":"2014-04-23T07:58:21","date_gmt":"2014-04-23T06:58:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/?p=8091"},"modified":"2022-09-08T12:45:29","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T11:45:29","slug":"tina-malone-egg-donation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/donor-conception\/tina-malone-egg-donation\/","title":{"rendered":"Egg Donation At 50 &#8211; Tina Malone Talks Exclusively To Fertility Road About Giving Birth At 50"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Tina decide\u00a0on Egg Donation and IVF Treatment to conceive her second child<br>If there\u2019s one topic bound to get the moral guardians all of a fluster, it\u2019s the question of what exactly is an acceptable age for a woman to have a baby. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whilst teen mums are vilified in the media as irresponsible scourges of our ailing benefit system, older mums are often seen as selfish, desperate types who have foregone their \u2018natural\u2019 child-bearing years for the sake of a career or even worse&#8230; a good time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Luckily, actress <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tina_Malone\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Tina Malone<\/a> has seen it from both ends of the spectrum. She gave birth to her first daughter Danielle when she was just 17, then had her second, Flame, at 50, thanks to IVF and egg donation. She describes, in emotional detail, her journey to become an older mother in her new book Back In Control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p><strong>\u201cI have to be honest with you. I\u2019d say only about five per cent of people have criticised me or have called me selfish. Are those people entitled to their opinion? Absolutely!\u201d<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>The Liverpudllian mum, who\u2019s best known for playing the outrageous Mimi Maguire in Channel 4\u2019s Shameless, reckons she is old enough and wise enough to take any criticism very squarely on the chin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI have to be honest with you. I\u2019d say only about five per cent of people have criticised me or have called me selfish. Are those people entitled to their opinion? Absolutely!\u201d she chuckles in her trademark, throaty tones. \u201cBut do I give a damn? No!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Luckily Tina is in good company. The number of babies being born to women over 40 have more than doubled over the past 20 years, and more than five million IVF babies have been born since Louise Brown in 1978.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Although Tina says she is still pre-menopausal, she chose to have IVF and egg donation on her consultant\u2019s advice. She and her husband Paul, who is 20 years her junior, travelled to Cyprus to a private clinic for the treatment and then went on to have baby Flame at an NHS hospital in Liverpool, where she says her experience was \u201cabsolutely phenomenal\u201d. Tina says she was realistic about her chances of having a successful pregnancy, but both she and Paul were overjoyed to discover that IVF had worked first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Tina Malone Pregnant at 50\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/QW11pSZKV2k?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI breezed through it. I won\u2019t be flippant, because I know that\u2019s not the case for all women. You have six weeks of injections and pessaries up the front and back! And I was working whilst doing that. We said we would give IVF three chances and we were lucky enough that it worked first time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI actually knew the day after I\u2019d had the IVF that I was pregnant. I just felt it in my boobs within 24 hours. They tell you not to test for 10 days but I did the pregnancy test six days in and I got told off by my doctor!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tina is, however, the first to admit that IVF wasn\u2019t a decision that she and Paul made lightly, and she practically transformed her body in order to get \u2018baby ready\u2019, shedding an astonishing 11 stone to make sure she was in the peak of physical health.<br>\u201cI\u2019m not saying at 50 years of age every woman should run out and get pregnant. I took two years to get ready. I didn\u2019t do it to keep my young husband; I did it because I really wanted a baby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIf it didn\u2019t happen, we are still secure and in love. If it did, then great! I gave up the cigarettes, I gave up the chocolates, I dieted and lost all that weight. I handed my notice into Shameless. We planned it. I didn\u2019t do it on a whim &#8211; we looked at everything from surrogacy to adoption to egg donation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Although Tina and Paul opted for egg donation in the end, she does reveal she was initially concerned that Flame wouldn\u2019t feel like \u2018her\u2019 baby.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut then I realised I feed it, I bring it into the world, it\u2019s my blood running through its veins via my placenta&#8230;. And since then I have learnt about something called epigenetics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cRecent research,\u201d she continues, \u201chas discovered that when egg donor babies are born, the baby very often looks like the birth mother. They now believe that once the eggs are put into you, the cells grow and develop into DNA, so the whole nature versus nurture argument isn\u2019t quite so clear cut.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tina now finds herself in the somewhat unusual position of being \u201ca poster girl for IVF\u201d as she calls it. She recently made a documentary for the TLC channel about her journey to become a mum at 50 and has even taken her battle to the House of Commons. The current NHS cut-off age for IVF has just been increased from 39 to 42 but Tina believes that improvements can still be made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI went to see the Conservative MP, Nadine Dorries, to discuss the issue of IVF. First of all there is a stigma &#8211; people whisper the word \u2018IVF\u2019 as if they are saying syphilis! But every single person I know knows someone who\u2019s had IVF. Be it a friend, colleague or sister. It\u2019s just so common. Secondly, it\u2019s basically a postcode lottery. If you are living in a low income area where there is a lot of poverty, a lot of drug problems, there is often very little money left over for something like IVF. You can\u2019t get an exact figure on the cut-off age&#8230; some local authorities cut off at 36, 38, 42. It\u2019s bizarre. Even when I pinned Nadine down to try to get an exact age, she wasn\u2019t quite 100 per cent sure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of Tina\u2019s biggest fertility bugbears is that while women\u2019s lifestyles have changed enormously over the past few decades, society and the medical profession\u2019s attitude towards older mums have stayed stuck in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThirty years ago,\u201d she says, \u201cthe average age of a woman giving birth was 23. It\u2019s now 33. My argument is that women are now more driven academically, they are more career-focused, they\u2019re more in control of their lives. They are maybe making better choices and road-testing a few partners!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cMaybe you aren\u2019t meeting someone until your mid- to late-thirties. So what happens? You meet someone, save for a few years for a deposit for a house, then you decide to go for a baby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You try for a few years and nothing happens. You are then touching 40 and the cut-off point is 42! And yet you have worked, you have tried to make a life for yourself and all of a sudden you find someone saying \u2018You know the system you have worked for and paid into?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well you aren\u2019t entitled to IVF, you are too old.\u2019 My argument is it should be up to 45.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tina is obviously undaunted by becoming a mum in later life and had a refreshing insight into the difference between motherhood as a young teenage mum compared to that in more advanced years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s sheer bliss now. I\u2019ve always said that the one thing I had in common with Margaret Thatcher is we only need four hours\u2019 sleep a night and that\u2019s where the similarities end! But I\u2019m so happy. In fact I am sometimes guilty of picking my baby up and cuddling her when it\u2019s not strictly necessary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote\"><p><strong>\u201cI breezed through it. I won\u2019t be flippant, because I know that\u2019s not the case for all women. You have six weeks of injections and pessaries up the front and back! And I was working whilst doing that. We said we would give IVF three chances and we were lucky enough that it worked first time.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>I still put my make up on&#8230; I\u2019m still writing, travelling, filming, we even filmed the birth for the documentary! I haven\u2019t had a day off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe only pro to having my first daughter Danielle so young was the very fact that when you are young you are fearless and blinkered. You aren\u2019t aware of cleft palettes, or Down\u2019s or stillbirths. Nowadays, if you read too much of the conjecture that\u2019s on the internet you become very paranoid about it. When you are 17 you are worried about getting back with your fella, or what you are going to wear, or if you have a date next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m 51 and very happy with myself. I have many flaws but I am aware of them and I don\u2019t try to conceal them. Before I was a kid with a kid. But I did a good job. My older daughter is beautiful, intelligent and successful. She\u2019s an actress and has never signed on in her life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cBut now I am more secure. I am with a wonderful man and have a nice home, and I am just more comfortable with myself. I am physically and mentally in a better state. I\u2019m not morbidly obese anymore and I\u2019ve been sober for 15 years. Even my birth experience was phenomenal &#8211; I was up six hours after the c-section having a shower. I did get pre-eclampsia before the birth but you can get that in your twenties or thirties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI was confident, I wasn\u2019t scared and my age was totally and utterly irrelevant.\u201d<br>And as a last retort to the critics, Tina says she would even consider having another baby.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m not fazed by any controversy. If we do have another, it will certainly be within the next few years. I don\u2019t believe in getting pregnant at 60. I think really for me, in my opinion, 55 would have to be the absolute cut-off age. There are no major diseases in my family. I think you have to look at your genetics and all the things that beat our bodies down. I\u2019ve got my body better. I\u2019m a fine wine, me&#8230; I\u2019ve got better with age.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tina decide\u00a0on Egg Donation and IVF Treatment to conceive her second childIf there\u2019s one topic bound to get the moral guardians all of a fluster, it\u2019s the question of what exactly is an acceptable age for a woman to have a baby. Whilst teen mums are vilified in the media as irresponsible scourges of our [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":8093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"2019-07-23T23:12:44Z","apple_news_api_id":"f76926ff-d3eb-4afa-8e9c-7e0f71adf9c5","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2022-09-08T10:51:12Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAw==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/A92km_9PrSvqOnH4Pca35xQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1964],"tags":[],"acf":[],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8091"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8091"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67313,"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8091\/revisions\/67313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fertilityroad.com\/da\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}