There's nothing quite like a bonny baby to make you go all soppy. And beautiful photographs of them are granny brag book essentials. To have lots of bonny babies at a swish cocktail party at the National Portrait Gallery was a little unusual, but they were bounced about, cuddled made to smile of course and for the most they barely grizzled.
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The party was to celebrate 10 years in Canberra for the Genea Clinic where the brilliance of IVF gave all these babies and their proud mums and dads the ultimate gift of life when nature made it just a tad more difficult than expected.
To hear the stories is a good thing as we take for granted that nature will make those necessary connections but for many couples that's harder than winning in the cup sweep at the office.
But these ordinary everyday people were determined and the Genea clinic and its world's best practice methods, the scientists and fertility specialists have an enviable success rate.
One thousand babies to 856 women in the 10 years with as much pride in that success for the clinic's team as the happiness and relief for the mums and dads.
Robert Jansen, who established Genea with his wife Diana, still gets a thrill out of seeing the happiness that IVF brings to couples. And with science way ahead of the ethical aspects of designer babies, that ''brave new world'' of babies sprouted by media looking for a story, it was Mark Bowman of Genea who directed me to the Radio National story about that issue.
That I did but happily came back to the real life stories from the families at the party and how determined they all were to have their babies no matter what it took.
There were genuine tears for the story of Craig Glover and his survival from cancer as a young man, and now with baby Lucas, the bonniest boy at the party, how it was worth all their efforts.
