Infertility awareness is marked at different times of the year in different countries. I have decided to talk about my experience this month as it falls between UK Mother’s Day and Swiss Mother’s Day.

I was actually never particularly maternal and didn’t have the burning desire for children that so many women experience, but my husband and I both knew that we wanted to have a family together. We were 34 and 39 when we met and decided to wait until we were married before we started trying for a baby. However, this didn’t end up happening until a month shy of my 40th birthday, so it was certainly not guaranteed that it would happen for us.

Infertility can strike at any age for any number of reasons. We are raised in a society that is very centred around the nucleus of family, so as small children, we subscribe to the ideal that boy meets girl, falls in love, gets married and has babies. It never occurs to us that we might not be able to have children, or equally, might prefer a different path. I never expected in a million years that a cancer diagnosis would be the reason why I would never have children.

We were busy preparing for our wedding in August 2015 when a check up on a lump in my breast in January of that year turned our world upside down. I had a benign cyst in my left breast in 2012 that never went away, so I wasn’t concerned when my gynaecologist didn’t even mention it during a breast exam in November 2014, though when it started to hurt, I went back and insisted on further investigation. Within days, not only did we discover I had breast cancer, it had passed through my lymph nodes and had metastasised into my bones. What had started as a “curable” cancer was now incurable and just like that the future we had planned was crushed.

With the exception of the gynaecologist who missed the opportunity to diagnose sooner, the rest of the team I had at my disposal were incredible. Within 14 days of the diagnosis, I met with an oncologist who had a treatment plan ready, a surgeon who explained the planned lumpectomy procedure and crucially, a fertility expert (and now my current gynaecologist) to see if harvesting eggs was a feasible option before chemotherapy which can cause irreversible damage to eggs. Sadly, there wasn’t.

My cancer is a hormone receptor so the process would have been too dangerous, as would any egg implant further down the line. The final nail in the coffin was the recommendation to remove my ovaries to prevent hormone production feeding the cancer. Not only did this procedure place me into menopause at the age of 40, I had to deal with the very real heartache of finding out that one of the ovaries had completely recovered from the chemotherapy and the other one was recovering. I think this was the moment that hit me the hardest. My future children were in those eggs and they had fiercely fought against the strong drugs that were killing them while keeping me alive. They were little fighters with the will to survive and just like that, they were removed from my body and their chance at a future was gone.

I admit that I have never experienced any great meltdown over not being able to have children though I do carry a great amount of sadness that I hide away. I think this is because there was so much going on at the time. I spent 5.5 months having chemotherapy, I was planning the final stages of our wedding, I had two surgeries – a mastectomy after the lumpectomy as there weren’t clear margins along with the removal of my ovaries, spending my 40th birthday in the hospital – and 5 weeks of daily radiotherapy treatment. 2015 was full from the end of January until December.

I had a year of clear scans in 2016 where I think I just tried to adapt to my new normal, get used to my new body and recover from a year of intense treatment. However, since then, cancer has never allowed me to get too comfortable. There has always been some sort of progression of disease requiring new medications, radiotherapy or radio-frequency surgery. My life is consumed by cancer on a daily basis so there is really little time to get bogged down with other emotions.

But I do feel it.

I feel it on days like Mother’s Day and Christmas Day. We will never experience the excitement of the little ones and create new family traditions. It can feel very lonely. I feel it when I see friends’ children celebrating their achievements. There are no first day at school, school plays, Saturday mornings at a rugby pitch, graduations, weddings or grandchildren in our future.

I feel the sadness of the end of a family line. I always enjoyed hearing stories about relatives or the high jinx my dad and his brother got up to when they were younger; there will be nobody talking about us and I feel an immense sense of darkness, sadness and finality about that. I realise that one day, if we are lucky enough to live to an old age, ultimately, one of us will end up completely alone with no family to visit us. When my dad died, we were all there and I hope that provided him with some comfort.

I feel sadness that I was never able to experience the joy of finding out I was pregnant, watching my husbands face as I told him the news, feeling my baby grow inside me and experiencing the pure love when my baby was placed in my arms.

Above all else, I feel a profound sense of guilt that I wasn’t able to provide my husband with children or our parents with grandchildren. I feel a real sense of loss and I still grieve the children that I could never have. I have found a way to navigate my way through this pain on a daily basis, but it is always with me and tears are shed from time to time from any number of instances that spark an emotion.

Of course, there are other ways to have children, but we felt that they weren’t for us. Given my health and my husband’s age, adoption wasn’t a viable option and surrogacy was just too expensive. But more than anything, it didn’t feel right to me to bring a child into our lives when I have such an uncertain future.

I am incredibly fortunate that 5 of my best friends allow me to have a close relationship with their 9 kids. I am allowed to shower them with affection and spoil them with gifts and I love them all to death. I spend an awful lot of time with my FEARLESS. partner and her 4 kids and enjoy a special relationship with her children. In fact, her 11 year old Nelle recently asked me to be her confirmation godmother which touched me more than I can convey. I love how they all feel comfortable with me, from 3 year old Bea happily asking me why my hair is such a mess to Nathan, the oldest at 17 choosing to sit and chat about everything and nothing with me. I love that Maisy likes to spend alone time with me, that Charlie and Charlotte both asked the most delicate questions about why I can’t have children, that Molly wants to do my hair, that Lauren is hilariously cheeky (the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree) and that Simon is unequivocally himself when I am there. The 8 year old Charlotte recently asked me if you can die from cancer over breakfast, not exactly a light topic, but I am glad she feels like she can ask me anything. I love them all.

I will always be sad that I couldn’t have children, but I have a good life that I am able to live well under the circumstances and a lot of wonderful children with bright futures in my life. I will celebrate with them – even if I am the annoying old friend of their parents they are forced to invite to their weddings!!

The struggles of infertility