Mary Portas’ Child is in Fact Her Nephew

The gregarious and multi-talented designer who rose to fame with her series ‘Mary Queen of Shops’ and began her career designing ever more wondrous window displays at Harvey Nichols has never been one to shy away from media attention.Currently the grand dame of retail runs a brand communication agency launched as Portas. Mary has disclosed that her wife Melanie Rickay became pregnant through IVF and the father is Mary’s brother, Lawrence Newton. As it was Melanie who carried the baby and not the ‘Queen of shops’ herself, the story is not as shocking as it might seem at first.

Lawrence, Mary’s brother, was asked to donate sperm so that Melanie Rickay, could carry the baby. Melanie fell pregnant during the second round of IVF treatment. Mary, 54, has said she wanted a genetic link to the baby and is in fact the boy’s biological Aunt as well as his ‘mother’. The little boy named Horatio calls Portas “mama”, Ms Rickey is “Mummy” and Mr Newton, who is living with the couple before his emigration to Bermuda later this year, is called “Daddy”.

Mary seems thrilled with how things have turned out and says that it could only have ever been Lawrence as the father to their child. They even had support from Scientist Richard Dawkins who tweeted: “Beautiful. Sperm donor father is the brother of the lesbian partner of the mother. I can see why he felt “honoured”. Dawkins tweeted this to his 1.12 million followers on twitter.

Siblings Donating Sperm for IVF Cases

Mary Portas or ‘the shopping tsar’ as she is also known, was married to businessman Graham Portas for 13 years and has two children from that marriage. She separated from her husband and since then began a partnership with Melanie Rickay. They became one of the first couples in the UK to convert their civil partnership to a marriage after this was legalised in December 2014. Portas is one of an increasing number of women in same-sex relationships that have asked male siblings to help with fertility treatments as this way the child is a mixture of genetic features from both sides of the partnership. Dr Simon Fishel, one of the leading authorities on fertility treatment has said that society’s acceptance of same-sex relationships has led to more examples of siblings donating sperm for IVF cases. Dr Fishel runs ‘Care Fertility’, and says that usually it has been a sister or a mother donating eggs to their sibling or daughter but now this new situation of a brother donating to a sister’s female partner, crops up once a month at Care Clinics. It seems it is preferable for them to go to a family donor than to an unknown donor. The couple get to keep the genes in family so to speak and know where the genes are coming from. Portas herself has been recently commissioned by the government to review the high streets in the UK. The Portas Review and its outcome for our humble high streets remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, when Mary wants something done she usually gets her way, even with having a child in her own idiosyncratic and ground-breaking fashion.

IVF DNA Testing

International Biosciences provide IVF DNA Testing for IVF patients. In many cases our clients seek a peace of mind test to verify that the correct embryo was implanted or that the sperm of the intended father was used during the IVF. Please contact us for more information.