A mum has told how the late music legend George Michael paid for her to have IVF treatment, saying he would love her 'miracle' son. George's generosity helped bring Lynette Gillard something that she never dared believe could be possible - Seth, who's now turning five.
Six years ago, Lynette was in a desperate place. She'd endured nine gruelling rounds of IVF over 13 years, suffering heartbreak after heartbreak when each one failed.
When her savings ran out, her partner, Nathan Hart, turned to TV game show Deal or No Deal in the hope of winning enough cash to try again. In the end they walked away with £3,000 - the cost of one round at that time.
But Lynette, from Westhoughton, Bolton, told how a sudden phone call transformed their lives. For when the episode was aired six months later, George - who would have been 59 on Saturday after his tragic death on Christmas Day 2016 - was watching.
The show's producers called her the day after. "They asked me, 'Are you sitting down?'" Lynette, now 44, said, reports The Mirror. "They said 'we’ve had a phone call, there’s been an anonymous donor, they want to give you £9,000'. I thought 'oh my god, that's a lot of money!'
"And I couldn't believe that we'd touched somebody on TV who had watched our show and that they'd actually picked the phone up and said, 'I want to help that couple'. I had no idea who it was from, they wouldn't tell me. All I knew is that somebody wanted to help and that we had enough for another three goes."
Determined to find a way to say thank you, she sent a letter to the mystery donor via the show and used the money to fund expensive tests at a clinic in London to find out why the embryos weren't implanting.
Lynette was born with a rare condition called uterus didelphys, where the uterus, cervix and vagina are divided by a thin layer of tissue, creating two of each. On top of that, the tests revealed she had a high level of natural killer cells, meaning that immune cells meant to fight disease were actually attacking and killing her embryos. The good news was that it could be treated.
In late 2017, a miracle happened - Lynette fell pregnant naturally, missing her period on Christmas Day. It would take almost a month for Lynette to pluck up the courage to take a pregnancy test though, such was her fear of suffering more heartache.
Then, on Boxing Day, House of Games host Richard Osman - who was a producer on Deal or No Deal then - tweeted about George donating cash for a contestant's IVF. Lynette called the production company and Richard confirmed she was the person in his tweet.
"It didn’t sink in at first, but when it did, I just burst into tears," Lynette said of the surreal moment. "I thought, ‘this is mad’. I couldn’t believe he was gone, and that he was gone before I had a chance to say thank you to his face. I was heartbroken that he’d done something so kind and I couldn’t thank him properly."
By the January, Lynette felt so unwell she booked a doctor's appointment, fearing she was seriously ill. Finally, with a ski trip just days away, she took a test - it was positive and by that time she was eight weeks pregnant.
With only half a uterus to grow the baby and half a cervix to support him, Lynette had been warned that she wouldn't carry past 28 weeks and would need to be induced. At one point she spent six hours in hospital after suffering a bleed, but believes George kept sending signs, trying to assure her that this time, it would all be okay.
Her son Seth was born weighing a healthy 7lbs 10oz at 4.05am on September 3, 2017 - nine months after George's passing. "All the odds were against me and I’d finally done it. He was perfect," she said. "I felt so, so lucky, I look at him every day and know how lucky I am. I look at him at night and I kiss him and I think, ‘wow, I’m so lucky’. I can’t put it into words, I’m just so glad I carried on fighting."
Seth turns five this year and is about to start school. Lynette said: "He loves music, and he’s funny because whenever George is playing on the radio, he’ll say, ‘Mummy, is this George Michael?
"I've spoken to a few people who were quite close to George and they’ve said he would have adored Seth. It makes me feel so sad that they never got the chance to meet. George will never know how much he changed my life.
"All I wanted was to be a mum, I couldn’t imagine a future without a child. I felt like I had been put on the planet to be a mother and nothing else made sense to me.
"If I could see him, even if only for a minute, I'd tell him what an amazing person he was, how kind he was, how he touched the lives of so many and how honoured I feel to have touched his heart. My life finally started when I had Seth, and that's all because of George."
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