A scrunched-up, adorable little face peeks out of a suspended Moses basket in the middle of a cosy Raglan home as a fire roars and the rain lashes down outside. It belongs to eight-week-old Cormack Lance Bennett – the living, breathing, bawling result of a seven-year rollercoaster journey for his ecstatic parents, Hansi and Alan Bennett.
Fans of TV One’s series Inconceivable will know Hansi and Alan, both 34, as the long-suffering Waikato couple who tried for seven years to conceive. But on June 17 at 11.10pm, their rocky ride finally came to an end as Cormack – who started life as a faulty embryo, fertilised via an egg donor with Alan’s sperm – entered the world by Caesarean section.
“It sounds like a cliché, but we don’t mind saying it – Cormack really is our miracle baby,” says pint-sized former teacher Hansi.
After failing to become pregnant naturally, the couple – who met at church in 2007 – turned to IVF. But after two failed cycles, it was discovered that Hansi’s eggs were genetically faulty. They found an egg donor but were heartbroken when the first embryo ended in miscarriage and the second one failed to take. They were told that the third and final embryo had “abnormalities” so had a very low chance of working.
Desperate to become parents, they decided to have the embryo implanted. “I didn’t think it had worked,” confesses Hansi. “I was hauling heavy furniture around at school and planning a night out, and a few margaritas.”
But a phone call from their fertility clinic on October 7, 2015, changed all that. The embryo had taken and Hansi was finally pregnant. “I wasn’t even feeling sick,” she marvels. “I had no symptoms, but as soon as I knew, the vomiting started and it didn’t stop for nine months!”
Due to continuous nausea and vomiting, the 1.52m teacher lost a worrying 10kg during her pregnancy. Even more concerning was the frequent scans that revealed their baby boy was on the small side.
The little fella has turned mum Hansi and dad Alan’s world upside down. “I’ve done the very things I said I wouldn’t,” says the doting mother. “I demand-feed and he sleeps in our bed.”
Despite being told to expect a premature baby, their son clung on, arriving a day after his due date at Waikato Hospital.
They had planned that Alan would help deliver their son – “I figured it would be a bit like calving but without the apron!” he jokes – but Cormack’s birth was an emotional one for his frazzled parents. When his heart rate dropped dramatically during labour, doctors opted for an emergency Caesarean.
“Because we’d had so much bad news over the years, we were thinking, ‘Are we going to get right to the end of this journey and now he’s going to die?’” recalls Alan. “I said, ‘Come on, God!’ And then I heard the first screams and there was my son! He was just perfect.” The bonny lad was 54cm long and weighed 3kg.
The couple, who shared their IVF journey on TV, want their son to be kind and generous.
“I was like, ‘Wow, he’s really long, with massive feet!’” adds Hansi of the moment she first saw her son. “But I was stoked once I knew he was healthy.”
There was one final hurdle as their newborn’s blood sugar dropped dramatically. But hours later, it had stabilised and four days later, the miracle newborn was home and dry!
“It’s still so hard to believe that after all this time, we have a baby,” smiles Hansi. “I thought I’d be this super-structured mum, but I’m not at all. I’ve done the very things I said I wouldn’t – I demand-feed and he sleeps in our bed. I’m becoming one of those weird attachment parents.”
“I love fatherhood,” adds Alan, confessing he’s the less proactive nappy-changer. “It’s hard to imagine my life now without a child. It’s just awesome.”
Cormack’s name came about under quirky circumstances and is a nod to the family’s rural background. “We were struggling for names,” admits former dairy farmer-turned-beekeeper Alan, who looks after 3000 hives in the Waikato region.
“A mate named his son Sam after a feed-out wagon called a SamWagon. I said to Hansi, ‘Why don’t we name our boy after a tractor? How about a Massey Ferguson – do you like the name Fergus?’
“She didn’t, so I said, ‘Well, I used to drive a McCormack.’ And she said, ‘McCormack! I like that.’ We looked it up and it means warrior. In the end, it was Cormack that stuck.”
As for who cute Cormack resembles the most, Hansi tells, “He definitely looks like Alan. Oddly, he doesn’t look anything like the egg donor. People have even said he looks like me!”
The couple recently had Cormack “dedicated” at a ceremony at their church in Raglan and Hansi is planning to go back contract teaching in the coming months.
“We’re going to raise him to be a kind, generous person,” says Hansi. “A contributing citizen with a real servant heart and good work ethic. He can be an All Black, a beekeeper or whatever he wants – as long as he has a job. Although, right now, I don’t think I ever want him to leave home. I want to be his one true love!”
