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Faith Hartley always wanted two girls — a blonde and a redhead. “I thought, I’ll have one that looks like me,” says Hartley, 35, smoothing her golden hair in the Los Angeles valley home she shares with her husband, Neil Robertson, 49, a redheaded Scottish tech entrepreneur. “And he can have one that looks like him.”

The couple conceived their first daughter, Aspen, the old-fashioned (and free) way, and she was born four years ago — her hair fiery red like her father’s. Soon afterwards Hartley wanted a second daughter. “I grew up in a family full of girls,” says the stay-at-home mother. “It was, like, girl family vibes.”

A boy was not on the agenda. And through Californian mom friends she discovered that if she chose in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in the state she could pick the sex of her child — one of the very few places in the world where this is legal. Hartley, in her sprawling home of sparkling white marble countertops, fur throws and pink roses, was thrilled. She was undeterred by the cost. In fact...