The day I started IVF was the day I took back control of my life. Until that point I’d been feeling increasingly without hope.

Somewhat surprisingly, IVF gave me a feeling of empowerment and pride – in my strength and commitment – combined with a strange sense of relief at being able to hand over at least some of the responsibility of conceiving a child to someone else for once.

Assisted reproduction was never something I was willing to consider, not even after a miscarriage and a further year of trying, unsuccessfully, to fall pregnant. Even then I couldn’t believe that I might be left childless.

Just one more month, one more attempt...

I’m a strong and successful woman and I’d already achieved one pregnancy on the first attempt. It had felt only natural that I belonged to that elite group, the women who boast about how easy it is: “All I have to do is look at my husband.”

However, as the months piled up in the corner of my life and the year slipped away, I began to resent those women – my friends, my colleagues and even strangers – who I came to see, very unfairly, as the “Smug Club”.

My resentment was compounded by the fact that friends began to hide from me their own news of good fortune in the highly prized fertility stakes. I knew it was driven by love and sympathy but it only served to remind me that my club membership had been revoked.

The feeling of failure had slowly grown to encompass my whole life. Success at work and other achievements in my personal life could not compensate for the hollow feeling at my core that my body was unable to perform one of its most basic functions.

I hadn’t realised until now that, for me, a life without children suddenly seemed a long tunnel of greyness; I was desperate to re-create the colour and wonder of my childhood for my own children and to re-experience a child’s joy.

My partner and I made the decision to shift our attempts at starting a family from the intimacy of the bedroom to the glare of the operating theatre to determine the cause, if any, of my sub-fertility.

Thankfully, it provided the answer – my fallopian tubes were blocked – and a decision on a way forward. I committed to IVF that day.

My “mummy club” friends took up the cause with gusto. I felt strong and special, having to make the sacrifices required and to overcome my own fears. Finally, I shook off the heavy shroud of failure and frustration under which I’d been suffocating for so long.

For me, IVF was not, and still is not, something to hide. There is no shame in acknowledging that sometimes our bodies can’t perform as required. No particular education, intellect or talent can overcome it.

I loved my babies from day five as we gazed in wonder at the two magnified bunches of cells, called blastocysts, we were privileged to meet before they were transferred to my uterus.

However, it wasn’t until they returned to my sight as two perfectly formed twin boys that

I finally understood the true meaning of life.

As they nuzzled contentedly into my bare chest moments after they were lifted, screaming, into the world, I was overwhelmed with the purest and most perfect love – a feeling that was almost physical in its intensity.

In that moment, they threw me a lifeline that is forever unbreakable. I realised then that no sacrifice can ever be too great.

ASSISTED PREGNANCY

In-vitro fertilisation (IVF) involves fertilising egg cells with sperm outside the woman’s womb, or in vitro. The fertilised egg is then transferred to the woman’s uterus in an attempt to establish a successful pregnancy.

While the overall live birth rate through IVF is around 30 per cent, the chances of a successful pregnancy through IVF depend on many factors, including the causes of infertility and the number, maturity and quality of eggs retrieved.