JULIET LE PAGE has two children conceived through egg donation.
The 55-year-old conceived her son, Rafe, when she was 46 after having IVF using donor eggs in Edinburgh. Ms Le Page, who runs Fertility Concerns and who lives in Edinburgh with her husband Richard, decided to add to her family two years later and travelled to a private clinic in Barcelona where she conceived her second child, Julia, again as a result of egg donation. Julia was born a day after Mrs Le Page's 50th birthday. The cost of the treatment was around £8,000.
Mrs Le Page is aware of more and more people needing fertility treatment and donor eggs.
"I don't think I'm that unusual in that my husband and I started trying for a family when I was 43.
"I think of myself as extremely lucky, and like a lot of things if you've really had to work hard for something you appreciate it all the more. I don't feel my family is particularly out of the norm. You get families that are mixed, with stepchildren as well as biological children, and same-sex couple with children. Families are not what they were like 50 years ago, and it's good this diversity is more accepted."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article