After seven boys, we finally had a girl through IVF!

After having seven sons, Jodi and Andrew McMahon took matters into their own hands to conceive a little girl.

You could be forgiven for thinking there must be something in the waters flowing by the lush Snowy Mountains property belonging to Jodi and Andrew McMahon. Some life-giving force that has seen this mum and dad bring seven sons into the world. The McMahons always wanted a large family. And after producing seven boys, folks in Tumut, in south-eastern New South Wales, began wondering if Jodi and Andrew were trying to start up their own footy team.

Sadly, they lost one son, Riley, in infancy. But while their remaining six – Luke, 17, Aydan, 14, Josh, 12, Billy, 10, Cody, 6, and Declan, 2 – are adored unconditionally, Jodi and Andrew didn’t think their family would be complete until they had a little girl. “The desire for a girl was pretty acute,” Jodi says. “We tried all the old wives’ tales. We tried different positions, went on high calcium diets, I put Andrew on decaf coffee. We don’t smoke or drink, so in theory, we should have had all girls from the things we were doing.”

While pregnant with Cody, Jodi started to make inquiries about gender selection with fertility clinic Sydney IVF. “But then the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) banned it,” says Jodi. “I was completely gutted.” It was after the birth of their seventh son that Jodi and Andrew, a fitness instructor, decided to seriously pursue their dream of adding a splash of pink to their world of blue. Due to the ban on gender selection in Australia, the McMahons flew to the US. There Jodi was given treatment to increase egg production. These eggs were extracted and Andrew’s sperm sorted into those that primarily produce girls. The eggs were implanted with the ‘female’ sperm and the embryos returned to the womb.

“If you have to fertilise eggs from ordinary sperm, you’ve only got a 50/50 chance of getting a girl or a boy,” says Jodi. “But we had 90 per cent chance.” Two weeks later, Jodi and Andrew were delighted to discover she was pregnant. Addison was born on May 3 this year. “I was still in shock, even after she was born,” says Jodi. “It’s finally happened, and we feel complete. We feel we’ve done what we came here to do. To bring some beautiful, loving children into the world. I’ve got one more frozen egg back in the US. So we’ll try for one more girl next year.”