‘IVF is very unsexy, but you experience a different, special kind of intimacy with your partner’

The Only Way Is Essex star Georgia Kousoulou has announced that she’s pregnant with a “rainbow baby” after undergoing IVF treatment.

Detox and energy expert Frankie Jones, 36, underwent the same gruelling fertility treatment back in 2019 before welcoming her son, Theo, five, and then again in 2021 when she conceived her daughter, two year old Ottilie…

“As much as there were really stressful times, I actually feel very fortunate that I knew from the age of 16 that I would need to have IVF. I was born with a genetic condition, Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD), which affects the cilia that’s in your body, including your fallopian tubes. It’s what moves the egg to where it needs to be to be fertilised. so because I have that I knew the doctor said the consultant said at 16 that I, would need It’s likely that I would need help with having children.

I had my funding granted with a previous partner – we’d gone through the two years of tests had my funding granted, but then we separated. When I met Shane, we knew that we wanted to have children. I thought all the tests were done, but I needed to go through them all again, as they’d lost all my notes! That was a very stressful point and was probably what pushed us to go private.

Shane and Frankie conceived both their children through IVF
(Image: Frankie Jones)

For the first round, we didn’t have that long before our transfer, so I didn’t do any prep for the first round. I thought, ‘I’m just going to go into it as we are and anything can happen’. But we were unsuccessful. The quality of your eggs is determined three months prior to collection, and I hadn’t done any prep for that.

So following that first round, I detoxed, and made sure that my bowel movements were looking good. There’s a book called It Starts With the Egg, and I used that as a guide for my supplements – one of them being CoQ10, which is known for being a really powerful antioxidant to support the health of your eggs. I had three months on that, and I really believe that that made a huge difference to the quality of my eggs.

Initially, I had fresh transfer, and that was unsuccessful and we didn’t have any embryos, or blastocysts as they’re called, to freeze following that. We were gutted. Everything builds up to that moment. Also, you become very attached to the embryos because obviously, there’s been so much investment emotionally, financially.

Frankie and Shane documented every step of their IVF journey

Once you have your eggs collected, you find out how many you’ve got, they get fertilised, and they give you a daily update as to how they’re doing and how they’re progressing, so you literally feel like you’re growing like these little babies and you’re really rooting for them!

Physically, I had a whole host of nasty side affects from the hormone injections – mainly I was super bloated, it can make you feel really hormonal. I had headaches and sensitivity to light – I wore sunglasses a lot of the time! Of course there’s the exhaustion and constipation as well.

Our second cycle was a lot more successful. We had seven blastocysts. One was transferred and six went into the freezer. That was my little boy, Theo, who was born in February 2019.

The reality of conceiving a baby during the coronavirus pandemic!

Our second transfer was a frozen transfer, and we actually had a chemical pregnancy with that one. It showed that I was pregnant on the pregnancy test, but the line began to fade, So it was like it implanted enough to raise my hormone levels, but then it didn’t stick.

Then we hit lockdown and the world shut down.

We were then able a couple of years later to have another transfer – transfer number four, which was our little girl, Ottilie, born in March 2022.

Although it’s such a difficult time, everyone’s just rooting for you. They want this to happen for you as much as you do.

Personally for Shane and I, we were very much in sync. I think that for a lot of couples, it’s very testing. But we found a really lovely place where it was our own intimate journey and it brought us closer.

They’re now proud parents to the very adorable Theo and Ottilie

We were very much on the same page. He was amazing.

IVF is very unsexy, but I think the vulnerability that you share with each other makes it intimate. You’re on a really special journey together – as much as it is very medical, very clinical, very unsexy, but emotionally, if you can be open and vulnerable with each other, you find your own intimacy there.

I think that more than anything it’s so important to still find joy in your day to day, because there’s such a big question mark over the future, but nobody knows what’s going to happen.

It really highlighted to me after our first failed round, how important it was that we built a life that we loved, that we were happy with and that we found joy outside of placing all of our happiness in having a family, which is a really hard thing to do when you when it’s what you want more than anything.

It doesn’t then become the end all and be all, even though it’s what you want more than anything in the world.”

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