Why my baby really is magic: Woman claims fertility spell helped her conceive after six years of trying

The daughter of a 'white witch' has claimed she gave birth after six years of trying because her mother cast a fertility spell on her.

Hayley Byrne, 25, had been on an NHS waiting list for a treatment similar to IVF when her mother, Karen Tomlinson, offered to help out.

She agreed to don a fertility bracelet, specially woven in the red and white May-pole colors while Karen recited a white witch's chant.

Just four weeks later Hayley was amazed to discover she was pregnant.

Now she and bricklayer boyfriend Daniel Shaw, 28, are the proud parents of baby boy, Daniel.

The happy couple even believe they will be able to fulfill their dreams of having a large family with the help of Karen's neo-pagan 'interventions'.

Hayley, of Burnage, Greater Manchester, said: 'I've always been desperate for a child and so has Daniel. We were devastated to think we may not be able to have any of our own.

'Still, I only put the bracelet on to humor my mum - I didn't really put much stock into it.

'Then four weeks later I found out I was pregnant. We were over the moon.'

Hayley added: 'I had tried everything under the sun - we'd undergone all the tests, some of which were quite painful.'

After seeking medical advice, the couple were advised to sign up for intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) treatment, where Hayley's eggs would be taken and fertilized with Daniel's sperm before being reinserted to grow in the womb.

Unable to afford to go private, the couple faced a wait of several years on the NHS waiting list for their one chance at ICSI, which only has a 30 per cent success rate.

In May last year, Ms Tomlinson presented her daughter with a unique gift - a fertility bracelet which she had spent weeks preparing and had left 'charging' in the sun on her pentagram for over a month.

Karen had always been interested in the power of crystals, but over the past six years she had become a keen follower of Wicca, a neo-pagan religion focusing on spirituality and the powers of the elements, and had even enrolled in a local coven.

When the Stockport-based coven began 'charging' fertility bracelets for the Beltane festival, a gathering which celebrates their God and Goddess coming together to produce the new king, Karen had taken the opportunity to create one for her daughter.

She recited a special chant and tied the bracelet around Hayley's wrist, channeling positive thoughts into nature bringing her daughter the baby she desperately wanted.

Hayley said, 'My mum had been involved in the coven for quite a few years and had always been interested in crystals. I just always thought it was a bit weird.

'I had no idea that before she came to me with the bracelet she'd been charging it on her pentagram in the sun for about a month. It was intended for me and she said she wanted to put as much power in it as she could.'

Despite remaining unconvinced, Hayley kept the bracelet on her wrist day and night and after four weeks she was astounded to discover she was expecting.

Shocked, Hayley took five pregnancy tests before going to her doctors who, in view of her conception problems, sent her for an internal scan which confirmed that she was pregnant.

With a new-found belief in her mother's powers, Hayley shunned pain-killing drugs and relied on just the power of 'charged' crystals to help her through labor, and son Daniel was born in January this year.

Hayley said, 'My mum had been praying for us throughout the pregnancy. With the witches as well, during their rituals and prayers.

'The birth was so easy and I didn't take any painkillers. I was expecting something painful because of the stories you hear, but my birth was so quick and easy that even the midwife commented on it.

'Afterwards I told Daniel that I felt sure the crystals had helped.'

Similar Outcomes In Babies Born Following ICSI Or IVF

Analysis of the longest running ICSI programme in the United States has found reassuring evidence that babies born from frozen embryos fertilised via ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm injection) do just as well as those born from frozen embryos fertilised via standard IVF treatment.

The researchers also compared babies born as a result of cycles in which the women had additional hormone medication with babies born as a result of unmedicated, natural cycles, and, although they found a slightly higher rate of malformations in babies born from medicated cycles, the difference was small - 2.2% versus 0.4%.

Ms Queenie Neri, a research associate at Cornell University (New York, USA) and a member of the team headed by Professor Gianpiero Palermo who pioneered ICSI in 1992, told the 25th annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Amsterdam that she and her colleagues had looked at all births from frozen embryos, conceived via ICSI or IVF, between 1993 and 2007.

Ms Neri identified 720 IVF and 1231 ICSI frozen embryo transfers. The survival rate of the frozen embryos was 74% after IVF and 77.2% after ICSI. The clinical pregnancy rate was 42.8% after IVF and 39.4% after ICSI. These resulted in 84.1% IVF and 89.7% ICSI deliveries. There were 27.8% multiple IVF pregnancies and 21.1% multiple ICSI pregnancies. Outcomes at the time of birth for Apgar scores, gestational ages, birth weights and congenital malformations were similar for both IVF and ICSI singleton babies.

When she grouped the babies according to whether they came from medicated or unmedicated cycles, she found that the clinical pregnancy rate was 42.1% and 39.4% respectively; delivery rates were 86.7% (with 28.7% multiple births) and 87.5% (19.2% multiple births) respectively. Gestational ages and birth weights were similar between the two groups, but the malformation rate was 2.2% from the medicated cycles and 0.4% from the natural cycles.

Ms Neri said: "Freezing embryos as part of fertility treatment has become a fundamental part of assisted reproduction technology. We found no differences in the ability of embryo generated by IVF or ICSI to implant, even after undergoing the stress of cryopreservation. We were unable to confirm a significant benefit of the unmedicated cycle on the neonatal outcome of the cryopreserved embryos; the difference in malformation rates was small.

"The original premise of the study was to identify a difference in neonatal outcome while in the presence or absence of infertility medication, with the assumption that the unmedicated cycles would generate better offspring outcomes. Interestingly, we did not see any clear difference in neonatal outcomes between the medicated and unmedicated groups. From our study, the combination of exposure to cryopreservation and medications or both did not significantly impair offspring outcome."

The malformations ranged from heart defects to defects caused by hereditary factors and sporadic genetic mutations or interactions. However, Ms Neri said: "They were within the spectrum of malformations observed in newborns in the general population."

As there was no statistical difference between the medicated and unmedicated cycles, Ms Neri said that it was not possible to say that medicated cycles were associated with higher rates of malformations, or, if they were, what mechanism might be responsible.

"Our study reported none of the specific abnormalities linked to male factor infertility, medications or other environmental triggers such as extended in vitro culture, which have been reported by other studies," she said.

"When you think about it, the reproductive medical field has created a new sub-population. These children are now reaching puberty and their fertility status still remains to be assessed. Therefore, the continuous monitoring of children generated through artificial conception is of paramount importance," she concluded.