By Jan Young of Angelsey, North Wales.

Some people are not lucky enough to conceive naturally.

Sometimes that is not possible, for a lot of reasons. People, who, like myself, have to endure test after test, heartache after heartache. Sometimes IVF (in vitro fertilisation) is a possible solution.

This is what happened to me. I had IVF, four times. Twice it failed, twice it worked, and I got pregnant, but I had two miscarriages, and we lost our longed for little dreams.

I thought my life would end. I thought there was no point in going on. Having IVF, was hard enough, but having got pregnant, twice, even then I could not manage to hang on to the babies, made it 10 times worse.

I felt I had let everyone down, including myself. But I battled on and have got where I am today. No, we did not have our own natural child.

It has taken 19 years and a lot of tears to get this far. It has not been an easy road, not by any means.

Our determination has seen us through. Our strength as a couple. Our love for each other.

I will always be eternally grateful to the medical profession for allowing me to have IVF to try to achieve my dream, but one thing always worried me.

A worry that was hard to explain. To someone who can conceive naturally it may be hard to understand why I worried. To others, who have undergone IVF, it will be totally understandable. You see, to me, it all seemed very clinical and cold. A baby should be made out of love. When you are in the arms of the one you love.

Not by having doctor after doctor pumping your body with drugs, scanning your uterus, giving you even more injections, then making your baby in a test tube. What should happen, in an ideal world, is that you make love. Then, a miracle happens. In total secrecy. In absolute silence.

Millions of sperm of your sweetheart secretly, silently, begin a journey, travelling up inside of you, searching for your egg. There is one special sperm. He stands out from the crowd. He is no bigger. No stronger. No different from his mates, but one thing makes him special.

Determination. He is so determined to find your egg. Nothing else matters to him. He will lay down his own life if needed. Next page...