Paul Henry’s daughter shares her fertility journey that ended in a fairytale. Photo / Woman's Weekly
It’s hard to pull the wool over Paul Henry’s eyes. And his youngest daughter Bella and her husband Julyan Collett know this all too well.
When they were going through fertility treatment in the hopes of starting a family, Paul – as a lovingly invested grandad – wanted to be included in all the medical results.
However, this meant there was little chance of ever surprising the seasoned broadcaster. So when the shocked couple got the news they were finally expecting – and it was twins – they had to resort to lying to throw the 63-year-old Traitors NZ host off the scent.
“My dad made me send all my scans to him because he knew someone who worked at a fertility clinic and wanted to get second opinions on all the tests,” explains Bella.
“As soon as he knew I had two strong follicles that could each produce an egg, meaning a chance of twins, that’s what Dad wanted!” she laughs. “Once Julyan and I found out from a scan that we were pregnant with twins, we thought we’d surprise everyone by announcing it at a family gathering the following week.
“But, of course, Dad kept asking all the questions, so when we told him we saw the heartbeat on the sonographer’s screen, he said, ‘Oh, just one heartbeat?’ I replied, ‘Yes.’ He went, ‘Oh, what a shame!’ Whereas when we told my Mum, she said, ‘Thank God, Bella – it’d just be way too hard with two!’
“They were both surprised and totally excited the following week.” As the new parents-to-be sit down with the Weekly to share their happy news, Bella is relaxed and glowing at just over five months pregnant. It’s the day after she – along with hundreds of Newshub colleagues – learned she’d lost her long-time job as head of hair and make-up at Warner Bros Discovery. While the news was grim, she appears pragmatic about it.
“A closure has been on the cards so many times,” says Bella, 31. “I now just have to focus on this new chapter of being a full-time mum, and appreciating every step and process of this pregnancy because we’re so grateful to have these babies.”
The couple have built a house in the small Northland township of Mangawhai because they wanted to raise their kids in a “rural-like community”, which they both enjoyed growing up in. When they decided to start trying for a family near the end of 2021, they assumed they’d get pregnant within a few months.
“Then when you don’t, your bubble bursts a bit and you think, ‘Oh, we’ll take a break this month and try again,’” says Julyan, 35, who is a co-founder of a New Zealand clean technology company, “Yeah, I thought I’d be announcing my pregnancy at my 30th birthday party,” recalls Bella.
“Infertility affects one in four women, yet it’s still something that many suffer in silence with. I knew I had endometriosis [where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus], so I thought if I had the surgery to clear it, that’d help me get pregnant.
“But surprisingly, the endo ended up only affecting my gut area. The surgeon flushed my fallopian tubes and told me I should be pregnant in three months. Yet nothing happened.”
After two and a half years of trying for a baby unsuccessfully, the couple had to admit temporary defeat and seek professional help. With tests showing no clinical evidence, doctors could only put it down to “unexplained infertility”.
“And with that, you have to wait five years to get a funded round of IVF,” explains Bella. “I didn’t want to wait until I was 35. So we committed to paying for two rounds of IUI and reassessing if we weren’t successful.”
Intrauterine insemination (IUI) is a treatment where sperm is prepared in a lab, then placed into the uterus at the time that eggs are released from the ovaries. Julyan is candid while divulging the not-often-talked-about realities of fertility procedures.
“I had to give several semen samples during this process,” he shares. “I could only drop them off at Mount Wellington – we were living in Albany on the North Shore – and because the samples need to be fresh, you’ve only got within an hour to get them there.
“On my first time, the traffic was so bad, I panicked,” grins Julyan. So I decided to do a makeshift stop down the road from the clinic to produce the sample because I was so nervous about not wanting to screw this process up.” Adds Bella picking up the story, “When he handed the little container over at the clinic, the receptionist asked, ‘How old is this?’ But Julyan was so weirded out and didn’t want to admit ‘five minutes’, so he said 30,” she says before they laugh uproariously.
The couple’s fertility clinic, Repromed, told them that only 10 per cent of women who undergo IUI become pregnant the first time. “So we feel like we got two IUI miracles on the first round,” says Bella. “We thought there’d be no chance we’d get two fertilised eggs. I even told myself, ‘A pregnancy’s not going to happen’.”
A month later, on a Sunday afternoon when the phone call came through congratulating them, Julyan burst into tears, which in turn made Bella cry.
“Then we went to the first scan and saw one foetus in a little sac and when the sonographer moved directions, another sac popped up,” he recalls. “I said ‘Hey, I just need to ask, is that two?’ And when it was confirmed, we just started cracking up laughing. I was in shock.”
Despite some nausea and spotting at nine weeks, Bella says her “high-risk” pregnancy has gone well so far and the babies are tracking bigger than they’re supposed to.
Her due date is mid-July, but with twins, she expects to deliver them at Whangārei Hospital anytime between 32 and 37 weeks gestation. If the babies arrive before 32 weeks, then she’ll have to go to Auckland City Hospital, where they’ll go into the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU.)
With the same infectious laugh as her father, Bella goes on to mention that Paul would come to every scan if he could. He already loves being a grandad to his eldest daughter Lucy’s children, Mina, two, and Reihan, five.
“Dad was begging me to come to my 10-week scan, so I let him, but then I felt bad for my mum Rachael, so I asked if she’d like to come too and she was elated.
“We squeezed into the tiny room and Julyan says, ‘Paul, would you like to sit next to Bella, where I’m supposed to sit?’ Dad replies, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that to you.’
“But when Julyan goes, ‘Are you sure?’ Dad jumps up to take the seat. So Julyan’s standing in the back corner and Dad’s sitting right next to me filming with his phone as if he’s my partner.
“We’ve got our big anatomy scan soon, but we don’t want him to see the sex of our babies and don’t trust that he would keep his eyes shut, so I had to gently say, ‘Probably not this one, Dad’.”
While Bella is “extremely close” to Paul (who has already bought an oversized ornamental toy dog and a sheep for the twins), she hopes to model the same parenting skills as her mother.
“She’s an amazing mum and a great role model to us three girls,” Bella enthuses. “She always gave the right amount of love with the right amount of discipline.
“Growing up, Dad was away a lot for work as a foreign correspondent – he was thrown into an Iraq prison and was even abducted by Nile River pirates! So Mum had the job of doing the tough parenting.
“Dad was the fun one though and we’ve had so many amazing adventures together.”
It was Paul’s wife, Diane Foreman, who introduced a 16-year-old Bella to Julyan. The businesswoman arranged for Bella to have a summer job working for her ice cream company. Julyan had also signed up and the two were paired together, quickly developing a strong friendship.
After their Cinderella-themed wedding ceremony and Mad Hatter’s Tea Party reception in 2020, it’s no surprise that the mum-to-be has again chosen a Disney theme for her upcoming baby shower.
“It’ll be Winnie the Pooh because that’s neutral,” she shares. “If we have a boy and girl, I’d also be totally happy to name them Mickey and Minnie, but I doubt I’d get that past Julyan.”
Their mutual “soft spot” for all things Disney has a touchingly simple explanation. “My dad’s parenting philosophy has always been to ‘Keep the magic in our eyes.’ I just want to do the same for our kids and see their eyes light up.”
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