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FIT BUT INFERTILE - SHARRON DAVIES

Sharron Davies, the former golden girl of British swimming, has just announced she is pregnant by her third husband, Tony Kingston. But at 43, this is more than a late and much hoped for baby.

For the couple have spent nearly the entire four years of their marriage - not to mention £70,000 - attempting to conceive the child they felt would be the ultimate symbol of their love.

With increasing desperation, matched only by their determination, they endured eight rounds of IVF, twice using donor eggs after Sharron came to the conclusion she was just too old to conceive her own genetic child.

She had already miscarried twice - once after being sent home to wait for an imperfect foetus to die, then quietly burying the remains in her garden.

In her first interview about what she describes as 'an emotional rollercoaster', Sharron says she can still hardly believe she is 13 1/2 weeks into a normal, healthy pregnancy - and that she is carrying her own biological child.

"It is almost too good to be true that we have been able to use one of my eggs. It was very difficult to come to terms with the fact that I might have to rely on donor eggs. But I would have moved heaven and earth to give Tony a child."

Sharron was already a mother of two - Elliott, now 13, and Grace, eight - when she married Tony, 38, a pilot for British Airways.

"Although Tony has been married before, he didn't have any children and I was desperate for him to be a father," says Sharron. "The more he said: 'I've still got you, Elliott and Grace', the more I felt he deserved the joy of a genetic child of his own.

"I had only a 15 per cent chance of success. But I would have kept on going until we ran out of money or hope.

"We tried to conceive naturally for more than a year, but sex became about nothing more than making a baby. If it was my fertile time of the month and Tony was flying, I'd follow him."

After a year of failing to conceive, they decided to seek help. "Tony was not keen," she says. "Like most blokes, he prefers to ignore health problems in the hope that they will go away. In fact, we were told we were both fine and that I was ovulating normally - although someone did mention my age."

At least six per cent of couples are estimated to be affected by secondary infertility - the inability to conceive having already had at least one pregnancy. The causes include problems with ovulation or sperm function, and infection. Secondary infertility can also be agerelated.

"They told us to think about our options, including IVF," Sharron recalls.

"We thought about all this for six months, still hoping it would happen naturally. Tony has never, ever implied that if we couldn't have children he'd be off, but I began to feel my own pressure to give him a child, which made it more stressful."

Then Sharron saw a TV interview with Professor William Ledger, from the unit of reproductive and developmental medicine at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals. He had launched a test to calculate how many eggs a woman had left and how long her reproductive life had to run.

"He put me in the trial and my ovarian reserve came out as similar to the average for a woman ten years younger," she says. "But Professor Ledger pointed out that the quality of those eggs was more important. He told me I had a less than 10 per cent chance of becoming pregnant."

Sharron was given drugs to stimulate her ovaries to produce more eggs. The hormonal treatment was unpleasant, exacerbated by her age: "The older you are, the more drugs you need to stimulate your ovaries. Taking pessaries, none of this is pleasant - but it was nothing compared to the emotional side. We were living by the clock because I had to be so precise about when I took my drugs.

"Tony was very supportive and came with me on all the checks. It was a six-hour round trip to Sheffield, so it would take a whole day for each appointment.

"We seemed to be going for scans all the time, to make sure the eggs were in the right place, to check that the drugs hadn't given me an ovarian cyst and so on.

"There were moments when I was short with him but we were able to laugh; the experience pulled us together rather than apart."

After the first IVF treatment, Sharron took a pregnancy test. "I had this idea that IVF was magic and was sure I would be pregnant, so it was a surprise when I wasn't."

For her second attempt at IVF, it was decided that the sperm would be given a helping hand using a technique called ICSI ( Intracytoplasmic sperm injection). Here, the sperm is put directly into the egg - but none of Sharron's eggs fertilised.

ICSI added an extra £1,000 to the £3,500 bill for each cycle. "We were lucky we could afford it. What broke my heart was the number of young couples I would meet, in tears in the lift, when their IVF hadn't worked and they had to save for a year to try again."

When Sharron went through her third cycle, she says: "We were ecstatic when, on the third try, I became pregnant. But at five weeks - about the earliest stage that a heartbeat can be detected - the doctors could not find one.

"I was about to have a D and C (dilation and curettage, to evacuate the contents of the womb) when they detected a heartbeat. But the doctors said it was too slow and I would definitely miscarry.

"It came at ten weeks. Afterwards, I went into the garden, without Tony or the children, and buried it. This baby just wasn't meant to be."

For her fourth IVF attempt, ten good eggs were produced. "They picked three to implant, throwing away the rest. I was livid, particularly when I didn't became pregnant."

Sharron then consulted the London Fertility Centre in Harley Street, who suggested GIFT - gamete intrafallopian transfer. Sharron explains: "With GIFT, the eggs and sperm are introduced into the fallopian tubes, where they would meet naturally. They are allowed to implant more eggs than when fertilised eggs are put straight into the womb. All seven were put in, but none took."

Many couples would, at this stage, have given up. "We were losing faith," admits Sharron. It was suggested that she try donor eggs. "It was tough to think that I wouldn't be related to the baby but, by law, I would be its mother. I would carry it, give birth to it and bring it up. Surely, I thought, I can do this for Tony.

"Unfortunately, in the UK it has been illegal for two years for eggs or sperm to be donated anonymously. And even then there is a four-year waiting list for eggs.

"The London clinic I was under had an association with a clinic in Cyprus, so we went there. Their donors are screened, as are the eggs, and anonymity is allowed."

They paid £10,000 each time for two IVF cycles using donor eggs, the first time fresh and the second time from frozen: "I thought that with these young eggs we'd definitely fall pregnant - but no."

Refusing to be daunted by failure, Sharron did some research and learned about PGD - preimplantation genetic diagnosis.

In traditional IVF, clinicians select embryos depending on how they look on the basis of their appearance under the microscope. This reveals nothing about chromosomal make-up, and the eggs of older women are more likely to have defects, which are responsible for the majority of their miscarriages.

PGD tests fertilised eggs for genetic conditions such as cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anaemia. It is also recommended for older women who have failed to get pregnant with IVF or who have had miscarriages.

The screening is done on the third day of an embryo's development once it has eight cells. One or two cells are removed using micropipettes; the embryo, if viable, will continue to develop unhindered.

Sharron and Tony decided to have a last attempt with her own eggs. Three were fertilised with ICSI, then the PDG analysis ruled one out. Another, a male embryo, was ruled in while results on the third, a female embryo, were inconclusive.

"We knew the boy would be all right and they asked us if we wanted the female embryo put back," Sharron says. "We said yes, knowing that if something was wrong, it wouldn't implant.

"Tony was away when I did the pregnancy test and I waited till he got back before telling him it was positive. He was overjoyed but it wasn't the happy time it should have been because we were so anxious.

Sharron, who has complained of watching her body grow out of control during previous pregnancies, has decided to enjoy this one.

"I'm 99.9per cent sure this is the last one," she says. "We won't do IVF again but nor will we use contraception, so if it happens naturally that's fine but I'm not expecting it.

"I want to treasure this pregnancy. It's not more special than my other two, but it's been hard fought for. With this baby, we feel we will have our perfect family."