Olympic sailor Ben Ainsile and his wife Georgie have revealed for the first time how they used a surrogate to have their second child.
After struggling to conceive the pair used an agency to find a mother in California, where commercial surrogacy is legal.
Their three-year-old son Fox was born in 2021, five years after having their daughter Bellatrix, who they had via IVF.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, the five-times Olympic gold medalist and his wife called for surrogacy to be ‘professionalised as much as possible’ as Georgie, the former Sky Sports presenter, said the process ‘nearly broke’ the couple.
Commercial surrogacy is illegal in the UK meaning a third party cannot make money from matching people. Surrogates can however be paid expenses during the pregnancy.
In-vitro fertilisation, known as IVF, is a medical procedure in which a woman has an already-fertilised egg inserted into her womb to become pregnant.
The couple praised the process in the US as being ‘so well-regulated’ and say they are choosing to tell their story now as they ‘want to help get rid of some of the stigma surrounding surrogacy, and to educate others in a similar situation’.
They met at a cooperate event in 2011 when the Ben was preparing for the London Olympics 2012 and Georgie was still presenting on Sky Sports, mainly covering Formula One.
The pair got together when Ben, who led a British crew to victory in the America’s Cup for the first time in 60 years last month, was was living in San Francisco competing for Oracle Team USA and Georgie moved to New York to work for Fox Sports.
In 2014, the couple married and now have two children together.
‘When we started out on this journey, the last thing we were thinking was ‘Let’s have a baby via surrogacy’,’ Georgie said.
‘And I’m so grateful that we had the resources to do it, but it’s brutal. Absolutely brutal. You only ever contemplate it when absolutely everything else has failed and there’s no other outcome that’s positive
‘Ultimately, I guess, we feel very proud of the journey we’ve gone on together. That’s important for both Bellatrix and Fox in the future to know that we have always been honest about it, and that it was always our approach from the outset. It tells them something too about how grateful we are to have the family we have because it was against the odds.’
After a successful IVF birth in 2016, the pair went through seven rounds of process when trying for their second child.
However, none worked and Ben recalled the ‘incredibly difficult period’ as his wife having three miscarriages in that time – at eight weeks, 12 weeks and 14 weeks.
The pair admitted surrogacy was not something either of the have previously considered.
Following a period making the decision, which was prolonged by Covid as clinics were shut down, the couple also contemplated adoption.
However, they opted for surrogacy as they wanted to have a biological link to the baby and settled on the US due to the country’s regulations.
Georgie said surrogacy ‘felt like the last step’ in their IVF journey using ‘Ben’s sperm, a donor egg and a surrogate carrier’.
‘It’s the hardest thing we’ve ever done,’ added Ben. ‘But in the end it was one of the most rewarding.’