INTERVIEW
Motherhood has taught me a love like no other Kate Freud M EE TS MODEL MOTH ER OF T WO Hannah Strafford-Taylor IN H ER LON DON H OM E TO TALK FAMILY, FERTILIT Y AN D FIN DING A JOB YOU LOVE PHOTOGRAPHY: HELENE SANDBERG
n first meeting Hannah StraffordTaylor in her immaculate London apartment, her flawless complexion and cheery demeanour completely belie the sleepless night she’s just endured thanks to her 16-month-old daughter, Winter, who’s teething (she also has a seven year old daughter, Soleil). “Over time I have learnt to appreciate every second, which as any mother knows, is not always easy,” she smiles. “But I know when I’m old and grey I will give anything to relive these years, so I try to make the best of it!” Her positivity in the face of exhaustion is certainly admirable, and the 38-year-old has always been one to maintain a glass-half-full attitude, even when at times, life has dealt her a difficult hand. She has been with her husband Ian, who runs a foreign exchange company, since she was 24, and right from the
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64 | MAY/JUN 2018 | babylondon.co.uk
off she always knew she wanted children, but her journey to motherhood was not to prove an easy one. “Both my girls were born through IVF,” she explains, “but what’s even more of a miracle is that they are from the same batch of embryos. I initially did IVF when I was 29 after my husband’s vasectomy reversal wasn’t successful. We had been trying for a while and I got myself in such a panic that I may not be able to ever get pregnant, so IVF was the next option.” Though Hannah says she didn’t find the actual process of IVF too gruelling, the heartache when it didn’t work was something she hadn’t anticipated. The couple were lucky, however, that during their first round they were able to freeze nine embryos and their daughter Soleil was the result of a frozen IVF cycle a while