Over 40s mum club OUR AMAZING JOURNEYS TO MOTHERHOOD
Carolyn McKenzie & son Harry
Beginning the journey to motherhood at the age of 41 came with a multitude of challenges for Carolyn McKenzie. Not only did she decide to welcome her son Harry as a single woman, but the determined mum-to-be endured multiple rounds of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in Australia, before using her younger sister’s eggs and a sperm donor.
“I always wanted a family of my own, and my mother laughed at me because I said that if I got to 40 and hadn’t met Mr Right, I was probably going to do it by myself,” says the Otago GP, 45, who celebrated her boy’s first birthday in July this year.
“Once I said aloud to my family that I was going to do IVF, my parents and two sisters were really supportive. I knew I’d made my decision, even if it was a really hard one.”
Because Carolyn was over 40, IVF wasn’t funded for her in New Zealand, so she travelled
