The winners of 2013’s My Kitchen Rules, Dan and Steph Mulheron, have been open about their motivations for joining the show: desperate to start a family, they’d hoped to win cash to fund further cycles of IVF after spending almost $20,000 on the treatment before running out of money.
Armed with $250,000 prize money, the couple dove back into IVF after their win. A session with Dr Julie Lindstrom at the City Fertility Centre in Brisbane led to the discovery of Steph’s blocked fallopian tubes, which required surgery.
Afterwards, Steph fell pregnant on the first try — a result which left the couple “so over the moon,” as Steph told the Courier Mail.
After such a fraught road to pregnancy, the last thing they expected to contend with was some shocking news regarding the health of their long-awaited baby.
But that’s exactly what happened, as they told the Courier Mail in an interview yesterday: During their first baby scan at six weeks, they had some frightening news:
“We had the first scan and the baby’s heart was beating at 60 beats a minute which is not great,” Steph told the newspaper.
“We were told there was a 90 per cent chance of miscarriage. We were very devastated.”
But the subsequent scan revealed some more hopeful news.
“One week later we had another scan and the baby’s heart was 140 beats a minute which is great,” Steph said. “And we thought, ‘Wow, we have a fighter on our hands’.”
The couple have just announced via their Facebook page that they are expecting a baby girl.
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Dan and Steph will continue to manage their Hervey Bay cafe, EAT at Dan & Steph’s, throughout the pregnancy.
Check out Dan and Steph’s MKR journey in the gallery below:
Want more? Check out this interview with Dan and Steph after they won the MKR finale.
Top Comments
Unless you have been through IVF you have no idea the journey, you do anything to just have a baby! You go to your GP to get a referral and then on the waiting list and treatment is done. All a GP does is ask how long you have been trying for and a pap smear and blood test. Well that is what mine did and 9 long years later and 14 cycles of IVF and ICSI and over $100,000 later we not have a beautiful baby son :-) I really feel for them!
Sorry but I can't believe you'd be having IVF without already having had the blocked tubes diagnosed as the cause of infertility. This is done via a reasonably simple and minimally invasive test in a medical imaging facility. Makes me doubt everything else in the story.
I am 38, infertile, I have had IVF and I did not have an investigation to see whether my tubes were blocked. My egg levels were so low it wouldn't matter if they were blocked or not - I was running out of time. We don't have all the facts of Steph and Dan's fertility so who are we to judge?
I also had IVF and my tubes weren't investigated. Between my PCOS and my husband's low sperm count it wasn't really relevant. I don't see how this would make you doubt everything else in the story when you don't actually know the reason they require IVF.
Really?? You do not know the stpry or journey leading up to finding a blocked tube. It may have become blocked due to the ivf or whilst on mkr show so was fine before hand. There are so many reasons npn of which are your business. Also just because they require ivf does not mean Doctors check every single thing. I am happy they are getting there long awaited foe baby.
No, I believe it. Private IVF clinics are money making centres and often run many rounds of IVF without doing basic testing. It's really sad to see people suffer so much when a simple procedure would have fixed the problem.