She's suing the NHS over delays that forced her to conceive a baby with a donor egg... So is Greta Mason honest or just plain selfish?



With his thatch of dark hair, olive skin and eyes which are already turning brown, newborn Jaden Mason is not - lovely though he is - the blond, blue-eyed infant his mother Greta always dreamed of having.



As she cradles her 8lb 7oz son, surrounded by congratulations cards, 42-year-old Greta is clearly besotted with him and insists that whatever fears she might have harboured about bonding with her baby evaporated the second he was placed in her arms.



'As soon as the midwife laid him on my chest I took one look at him and felt a surge of love,' says Greta, who lives with her husband Chris, 43, in Worthing, West Sussex.



A family made possible by a donor: Greta Mason with her one-week-old son Jaden



'We waited so long to have a baby that neither Chris nor I can stop marvelling at how beautiful he is.'



It helps that Jaden, conceived via IVF using an anonymous donor egg from Spain and Chris's sperm, looks just like his father and the couple feel blessed that his safe arrival by emergency Caesarean has ended 13 years of childlessness. They are a family at last.



So surely Greta must be as contented as the nine-day-old baby slumbering in her arms? Well, no, not exactly.



For she still yearns deep down for the baby she believes she should have had, indeed was entitled to have, using her own eggs rather than a donor's.



'I look at Jaden and he is so wonderful that I can't help but wish he is all mine,' says Greta with disarming honesty, 'so despite my joy at having such a beautiful baby, I can't help but feel bitter I have been cheated out of that and the genetic baby I always thought I'd have with Chris hasn't happened.'



Last week, before Jaden's birth, Greta announced she was taking the remarkable step of suing her health trust claiming she was denied the right to have her own biological child and forced to conceive using donor eggs because of NHS delays in treating her.



She claimed a barrage of unnecessary fertility tests followed by a six-year wait for treatment meant her eggs were too old to be used in IVF treatment and she could only conceive using a donor.



She described the loss of the chance to have her own flesh and blood baby as 'devastating' and a 'shattering blow' and posed the question to herself: can I really love a baby who's not all mine?



Her extraordinary and controversial legal action prompted a wave of furious e-mails and letters from readers who accused Greta of being 'ungrateful' and ' selfish.'



Others expressed concern that she would find it hard to bond with her baby, because he shared none of her characteristics and questioned whether a cash-strapped NHS should be offering free IVF treatment at all if the taxpayer is left open to compensation claims.



Chris and Greta Mason: 'I always dreamed of a baby who would inherit my genes'

This is Greta and Chris's first interview since the birth of Jaden. They say they have been wounded by the ' hurtful' comments made about them and say that their son's arrival, while joyous, has not totally diminished their feelings of bitter regret that Greta will never bear her own genetic child.



They refuse to be cowed by the criticism and say that just because other people may feel uncomfortable, it doesn't make what they honestly feel any less real or indeed natural.



'Of course we are overjoyed that Jaden is here,' says Greta, 'but there is still a twinge of sadness, the niggle that he is not genetically related to me. It isn't a question of love or feeling that he is not my child.



'Now that he is here I feel that he is totally my baby. I also love him more than anything - and feel incredibly protective over him as any mother would - but the fact is that I had always dreamed of having a flesh and blood baby who would inherit my genes with my husband.



'I have been reduced to tears by some of the cruel remarks people have made about us. The most hurtful thing has been those people criticising us saying I should feel grateful for the fact that I have a baby.



'I am incredibly grateful, but it doesn't change the way I feel. I am just being honest about very delicate emotions. The truth is, this seems to be a taboo subject.



'People are reluctant to talk about these kind of emotions, but I can't believe I am the only mother who has conceived a baby by donor egg who feels this way.



'You cannot sweep reality under the carpet and not face up to the fact that a whole part of Jaden's life is missing.



'For example, we will have no idea of the health issues on his side of the family and I worry about how we will explain his birth to him.



'I am thinking about Jaden. How will he feel when he understands that although I gave birth to him, I am not his genetic mummy?



'Will he be upset about the way he is conceived? I love him but when he is older, will he love me?'



Family resemblance: Jaden looks just like his father, Chris

Chris, who works for large transport company, adds: 'It is sad that Greta doesn't feel she can say "Oh, look Jaden's got my nose," for example, but I tell her Jaden has his own looks, he looks like Jaden.



'But I defy any man who loves his wife to say he is completely happy that he's had to have a baby using another woman's egg. When you marry someone it is only natural to want a family with them.



'And while words cannot describe the overwhelming feelings of sheer happiness I feel now to have a son, I feel terribly guilty about the suffering Greta's had to go through to have my baby.'



Some might regard Greta's decision to talk so candidly about her disappointment as incredibly brave, while others might consider it selfish.

After all, how will Jaden feel growing up knowing - not just that he was conceived using a donor egg - but more pertinently that his mother would have preferred a genetic child of her own?



Furthermore is the NHS really to blame for her predicament or is her legal action merely a symptom of our times where women feel they are entitled to their own baby if they want, when they want, and if it doesn't happen naturally then through IVF - of which there is no guarantee of success - funded by the taxpayer?



Greta is at pains to point out that while, for some women, a donor egg is the only way to conceive, for her it was an avoidable option as it was Chris rather than her who suffered the fertility problems.



She argues that had the NHS waiting lists not been so long, her own perfectly healthy eggs could have been used before age deteriorated their quality.



'It annoys me that people seem to automatically assume that it is always the woman's "fault" when a couple has difficulties having a baby,' she says, 'but in our case the fertility problem was with Chris, so it seems unfair that I was the one who ended with the baby who is not genetically related to me.'



Life is unfair, as many people can testify, but Greta vehemently believes the NHS should be held accountable, even though, you would have thought, if she'd been that desperate have her own genetic baby they might have considered going private to begin with.



As it was, they ended up remortgaging ttheir house to pay the £15,000 cost of undergoing private IVF treatment using a Spanish donor egg to have the baby they longed for after being told there were virtually none available in the UK.



'In hindsight, we naively trusted the doctors, that they knew what they were doing and there was a reason why we were not a priority case,' says Chris.' We didn't try to jump the queue - we waited patiently for the IVF treatment on the NHS.



'However, if someone had told us in the beginning that we would have to wait so long for treatment and then that during that time Greta's fertility could wane so much, we would have gone privately earlier.



'What is terribly upsetting is people who think because we are suing we must be mercenary people.



'But we are doing this to stop the same mistake happening to someone else - to stop others having to use a donor egg when, if they were brought in for fertility treatment earlier, they could have had their own genetic child.



'There are also hardly any egg donors so surely it is in the interests of the doctors to try to use people's own eggs and not leave them so long on a waiting list that they become menopausal.'



Married in 1993, Greta and Chris dreamed of having a family together and they started trying for a baby together two years later when Greta was 29.

After two years of trying without success, they were referred for fertility tests and in October 1998 initial results indication that Chris's sperm count was zero.



Further examination demonstrated that he was in fact producing sperm, but mobility was the problem and for it to be used in fertility treatment it would need to be extracted directly to fertilise Greta's eggs.



The couple now believe they should have undergone ICSI straightaway - a type of IVF where sperm is directly injected into the egg in a test tube and the fertilised embryo then implanted in the womb.



Greta claims that instead of offering this, doctors insisted on a barrage of further medical tests to check her fertility including a laparoscopy - keyhole surgery to check if her uterus was normal and her Fallopian tubes unblocked - even though she had become pregnant in a previous relationship and miscarried.



All tests, which also showed her eggs were healthy, came back normal and the Masons were placed on the NHS waiting list for IVF.



'I yearned for babies,' admits Greta, 'We hadn't even considered accepting that we would always be childless. I simply couldn't see a future without a family.'



It would be four years before they received their first appointment and a further two before they reached top of the list for IVF treatment.



By this time Greta was 40 and was devastated to learn that in the time they had waited, her eggs were too old to be successfully used in IVF.



She insists that at no point did doctors warn her that her fertility would wane as she grew older and she assumed that - because women do have babies in their late 30s and 40s - there would be no problem with her eggs.



'We have since discovered that doctors should have checked my hormone levels to ensure that as I was getting older I did not reach the menopause, but this wasn't done,' claims Greta.



'If these vital hormone tests had been done, the doctors would have had an early warning that my eggs were getting too old and they could have brought us in for IVF treatment earlier.'



Having been told their only hope of conceiving was with a donor egg, they reluctantly decided this was their only chance of having a baby and, discovering a severe shortage of donors in the UK, sought private IVF treatment in Spain.



'There, egg donors are more plentiful because unlike in the UK, donating sperm and eggs is still anonymous,' says Greta, 'but because fair-haired donors are rarer in Spain, guaranteeing a baby with blue eyes like me would have meant a wait of another year in Spain, so we opted for the next available donor.



'Not ever being a mother was something that was simply too painful to contemplate, so I never gave up hope there would be a child one day,' she says.



'Just because I am upset I couldn't use my own eggs doesn't mean I am not incredibly indebted to the woman who donated her eggs.



'I know it is a very painful process to go through and when I think of her, I can only imagine she must be a very loving and caring person to even consider donating.



I only wish that when I had my IVF I could have produced lots of eggs myself because I would have gladly donated them so another couple could have their longed for baby.



'But the fact remains that without that six-year delay we could have been parents a long time ago and we could have had a child that was genetically both ours rather than being forced to pay out for a donor egg.'



Which is why, despite being delighted with their new son, they are continuing their legal action against Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS Trust.



In response to the claim a trust spokesperson responded: 'We are aware of the concerns Mrs Mason has regarding the treatment she received while a patient at the trust.



'However, given that they are the subject of an ongoing claim it would not be appropriate for us to comment further.'



For the moment the Masons are adjusting to becoming new parents. They have several frozen embryos in storage - created at the same time as Jaden - and will with time consider having a full blood brother or sister for their son.



They intend, when the time is appropriate, to tell Jaden the truth about his conception and hope it will not affect his feelings for them.



'The fact that our baby isn't genetically mine raises issues not only for us, but for him. His donor was anonymous and there will be constant reminders of this in the future,' says Greta.



'I am sure there are some people who have babies by donor egg or sperm and never tell a soul.



'As it is - it will be my name on his birth certificate and to all intents and purposes I am his mother - but I have to be honest with myself and voice my true feelings.



'It is fantastic to see Chris with his own genetic son. I know Chris would have ideally liked us to have our own genetic child between us but I could never have denied Chris his own son. So there are no regrets and no way I wouldn't have gone ahead,' says Greta.



'Obviously, now Jaden's here, we wouldn't swop him for the world - not for our own genetic baby or any other baby.



'Now I feel so protective of him that I only have to look at him or hear him cry and I want to hold him straightaway. He's our child and we love him.'



But will Greta ever stop thinking about the blond, blue-eyed baby she might have had?



