We’ll never know where his DNA came from

Sitting around my friend’s kitchen table with a group of women my age, chatting about nappies, breastfeeding and toddler tantrums, I tried to join in with the conversation, but I was missing the thing they all had – a child. It was 2009 and my husband Ian and I had already been trying for a baby for nine years. I’d become used to the sympathetic sighs, the reassurances ‘it’ll happen soon’, the questions I almost had scripted answers to. But it didn’t stop the pain.

I met Ian in June 1998 and a few months later I told him I had polycystic ovary syndrome.