At least you have one. A throwaway comment but it sliced like a box cutter when someone said to it to me last week (after I’d already told them our last cycle had failed, but she’d seemingly forgotten). ‘At least you have a healthy boy, you should be happy with that.’

Shit, lucky you told me because had you not pointed out this fact to me I would have completely forgotten I gave birth to the world’s most perfect tiny human twelve years ago and who has been and always will be the absolute light of my life ever since. Just as well I have people like you to tell me the most blindingly obvious stupid fucking facts. Don’t you think I know this already???!!!

There are some things you just don’t say to a girl hiked up on fertility medication like a crack whore. And ‘at least you have a child’ is one of them. The other is ‘it’s so easy for me to get pregnant’. If you mention these lines to a woman coming down from a cycle you may want to wear protective eyewear…And possibly one of those Joan of Arc-style chainmail vests before doing so.

I was already feeling like a bucket of shit-stained undies at that moment in time and I felt like spitting staples at them. I didn’t say anything. Instead uttered under my breath the shitfulness of people’s ignorance.

What I wanted to say is, I’m quite sick of being Fertility’s bitch locked up in her dungeon of pain. I want out, I’m using my safe word, let me go. Let me goooooooooo. And I want all the people who think what they say is helping to shut the fuck up. It doesn’t help. There is nothing about ‘oh you have a child already’ that could possibly help someone who has been trying to make a small version of herself and her beautiful husband for the past four years and has been utterly consumed by it. Not ever. If there’s any kind of mind altering hypnosis/medication/therapy that can magically erase your ability to think about fertility, fertility and nothing but trying to get pregnant every waking day then I’ll take it. Shit I’ll even sign up for vintage-style electric shock treatment if you reckon it’ll make me forget about every single thing that isn’t working and blowing our dreams up like a hillbilly bonfire.

Last Monday it was time for my routine debrief with Dr Babies after our failed IVF I’m going to call the Worst Motherfucking Cycle Ever, I asked the question we all nervously mumble knowing full well we’ll never get a straight answer to. ‘Why didn’t it work…?’

It didn’t work because it wasn’t ‘our time’. It didn’t work because my eggs are shitfully old and shriveled into tiny caper berries. It didn’t work because The Vet is too stressed and exhausted. It didn’t work because I hadn’t detoxed for long enough. It didn’t work because I didn’t have acupuncture regularly for 18 months beforehand. It didn’t work because I waited too long between cycles. It didn’t work because I had six wines on Christmas day. It didn’t work because I didn’t drink the bin juice the naturopath prescribed me two times a day. It didn’t work because the protocol wasn’t right for us this time. It didn’t work because I rode my bike that one morning. It didn’t work because my body’s getting too old to reproduce. It didn’t work because I haven’t eaten enough leafy green vegetables. It didn’t work because my tongue is white and apparently that means your liver is fucked. It didn’t work because I waited too long. The biggest reason it didn’t work…ass-achingly shitfully bad luck. That is all. He didn’t have an answer because there really is no actual answer. It either works or it doesn’t. A fifty per cent gamble and our horse didn’t come in. It was a stupid fucking donkey.

The next words he asked have to be – apart from being told you are infertile – the single hardest words for a woman TTC to ever hear…’have you considered donor eggs?’ Bless him, it’s not Dr Babies fault, he’s clutching at whatever straw will help him make our dreams come true but I felt like tearing my eyeballs out of my head. ‘No, no, we won’t’ I answered a little too quickly. When you’ve brought a tiny piece of yourself and your partner into this world and you get to see little mannerisms, looks, features and personality that remind you a little bit of you or him, it’s a hard thing to get your head around. Don’t get me wrong, I really don’t love myself that much but once you have had your own biological child it’s kind of hard to have that right taken away from you.

I had never considered it before. Ever. Yet we’d talked about adoption – of which our chances are zero to zilch. Donor eggs were not on my agenda but all of a sudden they might have to be. If it means the difference between actually having a child that is at least half ours, and not ever realising this dream…well I’d be a dumbass idiot to not at least try it. And while it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to get my head around I’m slowly beginning to realise it might be our only option left.

For now we’re trying one last little glimmer of hope called Ovulation Induction – which at least involves no general anaesthetic, limited drug injecting and a bit of good old-fashioned rooting. Our chances are as slim as Kendal Jenner’s waist, I know but we have to try our luck.