Irene and Andrew MacGregor, who underwent IVF treatment to have their daughter Jade, helped celebrate the 25th birthday of the first test-tube baby yesterday. Barry Nelson reports.

WHEN the midwife told Irene MacGregor that the baby she had longed for was a girl she remembers crying with joy.

"Everyone kept saying it was going to be a boy - we convinced ourselves it was going to be a boy even though we really wanted a girl," says Irene, who lives in Consett, County Durham.

"We just cried, it was just too good to be true," she recalls.

When baby Jade was born on February 2, 2001, weighing in at a very healthy ten pounds and five ounces it was a dream come true for Irene and her husband Andrew.

Irene, 36, almost gave up hope of having a child of her own after battling infertility for 12 years. Yesterday, she joined more than 40 other mothers who have undergone successful treatment since the North-East's first IVF centre was opened in Newcastle, in 1990.

They came together to celebrate the 25th birthday of the world's first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, and to advance the cause of NHS fertility treatment.

Irene says the pain of being childless was so acute that she pretended not to want a family.

"All the years we were trying we never told our family, we just said we didn't want children because it was easier to say we didn't like children," she says.

"All the rest of the family had children and people couldn't understand why I didn't go all soppy when I another baby came along. I couldn't allow myself to get close to them, nobody really understood. Now that I've had Jade they all know exactly what was going on," she laughs.

Lengthy investigation into Irene's infertility at the nearby Shotley Bridge General Hospital, which lasted the best part of a decade, proved inconclusive, and so she was referred to the region's most specialist infertility treatment centre in Newcastle.

Her new consultant, Dr Alison Murdoch, recommended that Irene should undergo IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatment - but because infertility funding has traditionally had a low priority in the NHS, she was told she would have to join a lengthy queue of other desperate North-East couples.

It was another three agonising years before Irene was able to begin treatment.

If the couple had been well-off, they could have turned to the private sector, but they were not in a position to afford anything up to £3,000 per treatment cycle.

"We simply didn't have the funds to pay for the treatment. My parents said they would give us the money if we wanted to go private but we felt we couldn't allow them to do that because it would put a lot of pressure on us and if it didn't work, it would feel even worse," says Irene.

Rationing of IVF treatment is still a reality in the North-East and where you live will determine how quickly you can be treated.

Earlier this year, couples waiting for IVF treatment in County Durham were told that may have to wait until 2011 for fertility treatment because demand was outstripping funding.

So are the MacGregors enjoying family life?

"Having IVF treatment totally changed our lives, we now wonder what we did before Jade came along. It just makes your life complete," says Irene.