Baby Poppy Peggy ‘Binky’ Biddle has brought so much joy into her parents’ lives that it’s difficult to imagine how any family could be happier.

But then the much-wanted and long-awaited tiny girl, born on November 10 last year, is extra special. She is the child that Louise and Dave Biddle were told they might never have.

Poppy (the middle name Binky refers to her nickname as a ‘bump’) owes her existence to the IVF technique called intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). To her parents she is a miracle of modern medical science.

Dave and Louise, both 34, endured months and months of fertility treatment and paid out more than £16,000 for three cycles of IVF before a final, fourth cycle (this time paid for by the NHS), produced the pregnancy they had been so desperate to achieve.

“It was incredible,” said Dave, a businessman and owner of the Camel Club in Huddersfield.

“I rang the clinic for the results – I always had to make the call because Louise couldn’t face it – and when they said ‘you’ve done it’ I couldn’t believe it. I got them to check.”

Louise, a former air stewardess and clerical worker, says the couple first realised they might have a fertility problem after they’d been trying for a year to conceive naturally.

She explained: “We decided to get checked out and when they told us we might never have babies it was quite a blow. All I’ve ever wanted to do was have a family.”

The couple from Newsome, who were married in 2008 but have been together for more than a decade, discovered that Dave had a low sperm count.

“The quality was high but there weren’t enough of them,” said Dave. “I don’t mind talking about it but I know some men find it difficult.”

It was explained to them that their best chance of having a baby was to try the ICSI technique, which improves the chances of fertilisation.

“We were shown a film that showed how they did it,” said Dave.

“They take a single sperm, cut the tail off and send it down a tube to the egg. We have a photo of Poppy as a two-day-old embryo before she was even implanted.”

Couples are allowed one paid-for NHS cycle.

“There is a waiting list of 12 months for ICSI,” explained Dave. “So we decided to go private and get straight on with it.”

Treatment involved trips to the Assisted Conception Unit at Calderdale Royal where the mothers-to-be are scanned and put on a drug regime to stimulate ovulation. The actual fertilisation and implantation is performed at the CARE clinic in Manchester.

“You have to inject yourself with hormones, but it’s really quite an experiment to find out the right levels of drugs,” said Louise. “At first I wasn’t having enough and I didn’t produce many eggs. But eventually they collected 11 eggs and managed to fertilise six. Two were put back and the other four were frozen.”

However, the first two cycles of treatment failed and the remaining two eggs didn’t survive the thawing process.

“We found that out on our way to the clinic,” said Dave. “We pulled the car off the road and just cried.

“After that we started from scratch again with our NHS cycle.”

And this time everything went according to plan. “It was a brand new, fresh cycle and it seemed to go perfectly,” said Louise. “They knew exactly what drugs to give me and how much.”

Both Dave and Louise say the experience has made their marriage stronger although they know that the stress of IVF treatment can sometimes destroy relationships.

And their love for Poppy is almost palpable.

“She is just amazing,” said Dave. “I wouldn’t change the journey we have been on.

“We’d both like to thank the staff in Halifax and Manchester, particularly in Halifax. The level of care was incredible – they made us feel so relaxed and welcome, so special.

“We were excited about every visit. Every penny we have ever spent in tax was worth it because of the care we got in the clinic and in the delivery room. The team of people around us was so professional.”

Poppy finally arrived after a 12-hour labour, weighing in at 6lbs 7ozs. Both Dave and Louise’s families are, they say, “ecstatic.” And now they are eager to get going again to create another new life – a brother or sister for Poppy – using one of the two frozen blastocysts (fertilised eggs) saved from their last, successful, round of IVF.

Dave is thrilled at the prospect, as is Louise: “It will be a non-identical twin for Poppy, which is awesome when you think about it.”

Poppy will be one of scores of babies and children at the 15th annual tea party hosted by the Assisted Conception Unit team of the Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Trust.

The party, this year on April 14, celebrates the 100 or so new arrivals each year that result from treatment at the unit. Last year the unit saw 732 new couples – 99 up on the year before – from Huddersfield, Halifax and further afield.

Because of the unit’s much higher-than-average success rate of 38% – the national average is only 32.2% – it has a growing reputation.

Consultant Martin DeBono, who heads the unit’s team together with Sister Helen Marvell, said: “What matters to us as a team is that every couple we see gets the care which is best for them.

“After all, to get to us they have been through so much already, so we make sure they are supported and eased through the process and that, hopefully, contributes to a happy ending.”

THE fertility technique now known as IVF (in vitro fertilisation) was first developed in the 1970s.

Louise Brown, the world’s first ‘test-tube’ baby, was born in 1978.

Today IVF is offered to couples with certain diagnosed fertility problems.

The procedure involves the surgical removal of a woman’s eggs and fertilisation outside the body with sperm from the father.

To ensure an adequate supply of eggs women are given injections of follicle stimulating hormones. The eggs are collected from the ovaries under ultrasound guidance.

After the eggs have been mixed with the sperm sample they are stored for up to 20 hours to see if they are fertilised _ and then allowed to grow for up to five days before being transplanted into the mother.

Embryos can be frozen for future use.

IVF techniques are more successful in younger women, who generally have one embryo implanted to avoid the risks associated with multiple pregnancies.

As many as 40% of IVF procedures now performed are done by intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), which involves injecting a single sperm directly into an egg to fertilise it.