Fertility: the reality

When I learned I had fertility problems, I fainted with shock. This is not an exaggeration – it's not a figure of speech; I actually, literally, hugely embarrassingly (in retrospect) passed out on the consultant's office floor just as he was explaining to me that evidence of antibodies had been discovered affecting my sperm – which is one reason why, after about 18 months of trying, my wife and I were still childless.

Good preparation

In a way, I guess that degree of shock was good preparation for the  extraordinary gamut of emotions we would go through over the next year or so. It's a happy ending, by the way but, like many couples needing fertility treatment, we seldom thought it would be along the way.

After the initial shock wore off, we felt very depressed – we just couldn't see how we could succeed, since the chances of a successful birth from a fertility clinic were about one in five.

I guess we were feeling what most couples needing assisted conception feel – fearful that it would fail, slightly bitter about the "why us?" aspect of it; depressed at the low chance of success.

Taking positive action

Taking positive action is a very good way to help you snap out of this – that, and the extremely encouraging and upbeat way the staff at the Centre for Assisted Reproduction at The Park Hospital, near Nottingham, made us feel ever more hopeful as we began our first course of ICSI treatment...

All of which made it even more of a crushing disappointment when, about 10 days after the transfer of three embryos, my wife's period arrived.

In retrospect, we were crazy to go straight back in to a second course of treatment – our emotions had taken a battering, the drugs had taken their toll on my wife, both physically and mentally. We were feeling low, and desperately trying not to think of what would happen if we failed again...

But we didn't fail, and as long as I live I will never, ever forget the look on my wife Kate's face as we stood outside the Atlas deli in Nottingham when I took the call that said we had had a successful pregnancy test.

I thought that day was the happiest of my life – although, six weeks later, when we learned we were having twins, topped it and about 30 weeks after that, when Ben and Charlie came squealing into our lives, we hit another unforgettable high.

And then the rest of our lives started