Tracey Britten, 51, a Preston native who now resides in London, gained notoriety when she gave birth to four IVF babies at 31 weeks last year. The infants defied the odds to celebrate their first birthday yesterday after enduring a desperate struggle for survival in the intensive care unit. Ms. Britten, a grandmother of eight and the mother of three adult children, honored the occasion by taking her one-year-olds to Preston, Lancashire, to see her mother’s grave. Britten received £7,000 from her grandmother Pauline Smith after her death in 2007, which she used for IVF to conceive.
I wouldn’t have been able to undergo IVF if it weren’t for my mother’s bequest, according to Ms. Britten. To thank her, I always want to do this on their first birthday. After failing to conceive naturally, Ms. Britten and her roofer husband Stephen, 40, looked into in vitro fertilization as a potential possibility. The pair traveled to a clinic in Cyprus where Ms. Britten underwent her first successful transplant after the NHS deemed them to be too old for care. On October 26, 2018, in London, she gave birth to George, the identical twins Francesca and Fredrica, as well as Grace, the younger sister.
More than ten years after Pauline’s passing, miracle kids have continued to be produced, and Ms. Britten claims that she consistently saves her mother’s money for a rainy day. I guess I’ll strive toward it when I’m unable to become pregnant, she added. I feel fortunate to be able to fulfill Mom’s long-held wish for one of her daughters to become pregnant with twins. Mom. She’s a great person who will give you everything. Francesca was a “bossy boot,” according to Ms. Britten; if she cried, Fredrica would go.
She stated that George was giggling “from the moment she woke up till she went to sleep,” while Grace was “who she was, nice and serene.” Britten and Stephen wed seven years ago after meeting in 2005. When Britten found out she was pregnant with four children last year, she ‘nearly fell out of bed’.
I cried, thinking there was no way I could have seven children, Ms. Britten admitted.
I quickly moved from having three children to seven. I had the impression that I was out of my body. He was just as excited as Larry when I told Stephen about it when I got home. At least we don’t need any more, he just said. As the physicians advised aborting the two infants throughout the pregnancy, their delight was replaced by sorrow. The scans revealed that one of the identical twins was drawing blood from her sister, and Ms. Britten and Stephen were given just a few days to decide what to do. Former addiction counselor Ms. Britten decided to “let things go” after seeing a US doctor who had given birth 120 times.
I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I chose to terminate the contract,’ she said. The pregnancy went well and all the babies survived. Ms Britten was a teenager when she had an older daughter and son and 28 years old when she had her third child. More than two decades later, she finds many differences in her approach to parenting.
“When you’re young, you want to go out, go to clubs, go abroad and you get frustrated when you can’t find a babysitter,” Ms Britten said.
But as you get older, you get more comfortable and you take that out of your system. I want to enjoy the blessing I have been given. Due to being born prematurely, babies can’t crawl yet and only started sitting 6 weeks ago.
Ms Britten added: ‘They’ll be mobile soon, but that doesn’t bother me. I have a big cot and I use it when I need to do something around the house.’
