A couple have become the first in Britain to have a baby using a new fertility technique, after seven years of trying to become parents.

Evie Bloomer was conceived using vitrification - a method of embryo storage that has a higher success rate than the standard slow-freezing process. Her parents, Ian and Rebecca, from Cwmbran, South Wales, have been trying for a baby since marrying in 2001. Mrs Bloomer, 28, suffers endometriosis, a condition in which womb tissue grows elsewhere in the abdomen.

The couple, who were childhood sweethearts, had IVF treatment at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. Evie was born last month at the Royal Gwent Hospital, Newport, weighing 7lb 10oz.

Mrs Bloomer said yesterday: “It's overwhelming. I'm still staring at her now, thinking, ‘Wow, she's ours, it's actually happened for us'. I hope that if anybody going through treatment sees us, and sees Evie, it gives them one last little bit of hope to go for it.”

Mr Bloomer, 32, a repair and maintenance engineer, said: “I still can't believe it. We waited so long and now she's actually here.”

Evie's birth is a landmark because vitrification could deliver substantial improvements in fertility treatment. Embryo freezing allows parents to store surplus embryos should the first cycle fail, or to try for further children later on. The first such baby was born in the United States in 1984 and thousands have since been born in Britain.

But only 50-80 per cent of frozen embryos survive the thawing process because of ice crystals, which can cause fatal damage. Vitrification is an improved method by which embryos are flash-frozen in liquid nitrogen, together with an antifreeze. Around 98 per cent of embryos frozen this way survive thawing.

Lyndon Miles, head of embryology and andrology at IVF Wales, who treated the Bloomers, said that a vitrification programme started in August last year was already delivering very promising results.

Of 39 couples treated so far, 17 have had a pregnancy and the success rate of 43.5 per cent is more than double the 21 per cent that the clinic has achieved with slow-frozen embryos.

Dr Miles said wider use of vitrification could help the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority to persuade more couples to use just one embryo in IVF treatment, potentially cutting the multiple birthrate from one in four to one in ten.

“If you are going to have single embryo transfer, your embryo freezing programme has to be very good so you have embryos available as a back-up,” he said.

“Though this is a new technique for the UK, early results and publications in Japan and the USA have been extremely encouraging. The first published study on babies born from vitrification shows no adverse effects and there are no implications to Evie's health as a result of the process.”

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