What a heartwarming story:

Joan Isherwood, from Warrington, Cheshire, said she felt as though her life had been destroyed after a car accident on holiday left her two sons dead.

She is shown in a BBC documentary to be broadcast tonight meeting Sylvia Barr for the first time, whose egg donation 19 years ago made it possible for her to give birth to twins Jonathan and Katherine. The donation was made before a change in the law came into force in 2005 removing the right to remain anonymous for people donating eggs and sperm.

”We were told it was a totally anonymous decision and as far as I was concerned that was the end of it,” Mrs Isherwood told BBC Breakfast. ”But I often used to wonder because not only did Sylvia help to create the twins but she actually gave me my life back because I felt as though my life had been destroyed.” She added: ”I was so grateful to be given the chance to create a second family that had I met Sylvia on the day she donated the eggs I would have been absolutely thrilled.”

Ms Barr, of Brockham, Surrey, one of the UK’s first anonymous egg donors, said she had discovered the identity of her recipient ”early on” and had been keen to get in contact with the family. She had done so after ”tactful and sensitive” help from the charity UK DonorLink, she said. She told the programme that there had been a ”stark decrease” in the number of egg and sperm donors coming forward since the law giving anonymity to donors was lifted.

”I would say that it is evident from our experience that it can work and you can have a relationship and that people do not need to be threatened by it,” she said. ”There is a connection there, it is undeniable and I do not see anything wrong with it, everybody has their own opinion, but I feel it has been good, it has been a positive for all of us. ”It has got to have been positive for the twins to know that missing piece of their jigsaw.”