The pain goes deep. Feelings of failure, inadequacy, isolation, despair, worthlessness and powerless are common. The grief can become unbearable.
Infertility is a bigger problem than most people realise.
The facts of infertility are that one in six couples is infertile. The stress it causes can overflow into the rest of people's lives, destroy marriages and, in a few cases, has driven individuals to suicide. A couple is classed as infertile if they have been unable to conceive a child after six to twelve months of unprotected sex. A man may be infertile if he does not have enough sperm, if the sperm he does have does not function properly or if passageways are blocked. In a woman, infertility happens if ovulation doesn't occur, if the uterus doesn't prepare itself to receive a newly fertilised embryo, if tubes are blocked or if the body doesn't create the right conditions for sperm to survive in.