A MUM from Northwich is looking forward to an extra special Christmas with a baby she thought she would never have.

Jane Crump was told her fertility levels were so low that she would not even be suitable for IVF, but after acupuncture and herbal remedies, she gave birth to Izabella earlier this year.

At 42, Jane was mum to nine-month-old Charlie and expecting a second baby with her husband Phil.

But when she went for a scan on her 42nd birthday, she found out the baby had no heartbeat and had died.

“I was devastated to lose a baby at 11 weeks, but had no reason to think I wouldn’t get pregnant again easily,” said Jane.

She and Phil desperately wanted a little brother or sister for Charlie and, after six months without becoming pregnant, they were advised to investigate their fertility levels.

Jane, a flight attendant with British Airways, took the anti-mullerian hormone fertility test, which gives an estimate of the woman’s remaining egg supply.

Her results showed a level of 1.49 pnol/L, which is classed as very low or undetected. A good level for conception would be 28 or above.

She said: “I was absolutely shocked by the result. By then I was 42 and felt the pressure of my biological clock ticking.

“I already had one beautiful child but somehow felt incomplete after losing the second baby.

“My anti-mullerian score was so low that we were told we were not even suitable for IVF and would only be considered us if we used egg donation.

“I panicked after the result, thinking that we would never have another child. But I am a positive person and believed that if it was going to be it would be.

“I felt as though my family life was hanging like a pendulum – on one side was the devastation that we would never have another baby and on the other we thought, if it happens, it happens.

“We did think we had left it too late.

“I wasn’t a career woman who only started thinking about a family in my 40s – Phil and I didn’t meet until I was 40 – and once we were married we did want a family.”

Jane decided to try alternative therapy at Cheshire Natural Health, and embarked on a course of acupuncture and herbal medicine to reduce her stress levels, balance her natural cycle and nourish her endometrial lining after ovulation.

In just a few months, Jane was able to break the news to Phil that they were to be parents again without the trauma of IVF, and little Izabella was born on March 24, weighing seven pounds six ounces.