“Possibly the greatest moment of my life”: Chris Reason looks back on the extraordinary journey that led him to fatherhood after ca:ncer
For Chris Reason, becoming a father was a moment that carried far more weight than most people could ever know.
The veteran Australian journalist had already been through one of the most frightening chapters of his life when cancer entered his world. Years later, after treatment and the uncertainty that followed, he and his wife Kathryn would face another deeply personal challenge on their journey to becoming parents.
There would be four rounds of IVF.
And then, finally, there were two babies.
A life changed by cancer
Chris has spoken openly about how cancer altered his perspective on life.
His diagnosis came at a time when he could not have known just how dramatically his future would unfold. The illness and its treatment left lasting reminders, but they also changed the way he looked at the things many people can easily take for granted.
In a later reflection on his experience, Chris described cancer as one of the worst things that had happened to him, while acknowledging that it had also given him a different and more profound view of life.
That perspective would become particularly meaningful when he and Kathryn began trying to build their family.
Four rounds of IVF before Sam and Lucy
For Chris and Kathryn, parenthood did not come easily.
The couple went through four gruelling rounds of IVF before they finally conceived their twins, Sam and Lucy.
IVF can be an emotionally exhausting journey even without everything else that life may already have placed on a couple’s shoulders.
For Chris, the experience came after cancer had already taught him how fragile life could be.
And after four attempts, the dream of becoming a father was no longer simply something to hope for.
It was about to become real.
Then came the moment he would never forget
When Sam and Lucy were born, Chris found himself in a quiet hospital room with his two newborn children in his arms.
He later recalled the extraordinary simplicity of that moment.
“When the twins were born it was possibly the greatest moment of my life really,” he said.
He remembered being asked by a nurse to take his shirt off before holding the babies. Bare-chested, he held Sam and Lucy in his arms, describing the scene as an intensely emotional moment in the quiet of the room.
After everything that had come before, Chris said he felt as though he had been “handed life back.”
It is difficult to imagine a more powerful way of describing what those two babies represented.
The two lives that made the difficult years mean something different
Sam and Lucy were not simply the end of a long IVF journey.
For Chris, their arrival came after years that had taught him not to assume that tomorrow would simply arrive as expected.
In 2014, reflecting on his cancer journey, Chris wrote about reaching ten years in remission and described how much had entered his life during that decade — including his wife, his two children, friends and experiences he once feared he might never have.
He wrote that those moments felt even more precious because he knew how close he had come to never having them.
That thought gives his memory of the twins’ birth an even deeper meaning.
“Possibly the greatest moment of my life”
There are moments in life that are difficult to put into words.
For Chris Reason, one of them came after cancer, after uncertainty and after four attempts to make his dream of fatherhood a reality.
It was not a television moment or a career achievement.
It was simply a quiet room, two newborn babies and a father holding them for the first time.
And after everything he had been through, that was the moment Chris remembered as “possibly the greatest” of his life.