Episode Details

Trigger warning: This episode discusses perinatal loss, pregnancy after loss, premature birth.

Some stories hold grief and joy in the same hands. Gemma's is one of them.

Gemma is the youngest of three sisters, from one of those enormous, chaotic, deeply close families — her mum one of eleven, Gemma one of twenty-something first cousins, Christmases that required crowd control. Motherhood was never a question. The path to it just looked nothing like she expected.

She started IVF at 40 through City Fertility with Dr David Wilkinson, following a PCOS diagnosis that had been quietly there for years, masked by the pill she'd been on since her teens for her skin. Her first cycle gave her three embryos. Her second transfer was successful. She was pregnant, and everything seemed fine — until the 20-week scan.

Her first little boy, Thomas, had severe intrauterine growth restriction. He was measuring below the first percentile. She knew in her gut from that day that it wasn't going to end the way she hoped. A month of additional scans confirmed it — he was no longer going to survive. That weekend, while Gemma was at the beach with her mum and sister, Thomas quietly let go. She was induced at the Monash that Monday, and he was born on the 10th of March 2023. She named him Thomas — her papa's name.

She talks about all of it. The grief. The immediate instinct to do another egg collection while her eggs were still viable. A third cycle that produced over thirty eggs and no embryos. A fourth cycle that produced one. And then, in March 2024, the transfer of the very last embryo from that very first cycle — the one that had been frozen alongside Thomas — that became Henry.

Henry was born via emergency caesarean at 34 weeks, weighing 1.512 kilograms. He spent 37 days in special care. He came home for Christmas. He is now 15 months old, has just started walking, and recently fell off the climbing equipment at daycare head first.

Gemma says she wouldn't change any of it.

• Growing up in a huge close-knit family, always knowing motherhood was part of the plan

• A PCOS diagnosis at 38 — and how she'd been masking the symptoms with the pill for years

• Negotiating paid parental leave with her employer — and why it's worth having the conversation

• IVF at 40 with Dr David Wilkinson: one cycle, three embryos, pregnant on the second transfer

• The 20-week scan that changed everything — and trusting her gut when her body told her something was wrong

• Losing Thomas to severe IUGR, the weekend at the beach, and delivering him on the 10th of March

• Going straight back to Dr Wilkinson — and the third cycle that produced thirty-plus eggs and zero embryos

• A fourth cycle, one embryo, and then the transfer that became Henry

• The full-circle moment: Henry and Thomas were from the same egg collection, frozen on the same day

• The donor who agreed to do a blood test for genetic testing during Thomas's pregnancy — and what that meant to Gemma

• Pregnancy after loss: weekly scans, a private obstetrician, a perinatal psychiatrist, and monit