When I started trying to conceive aged 26, I knew it wouldn’t be easy – I had endometriosis, polycystic ovaries and periods so infrequent that if everyone were like this, the birth rate would plummet. For a year, nothing happened. My initial (misplaced) optimism gave way to nervousness, and then dejection crept in. One by one, my friends got pregnant, while I still hadn’t even had a period.

I got married, went on honeymoon, and then I began to bleed. The pain was so acute that I couldn’t stand up straight. I bled for a month. I thought it was just my endometriosis again. One morning, I couldn’t get out of bed. I was having an ectopic pregnancy.

There was a huge amount of internal bleeding. I lost my fallopian tube and along with it, the pregnancy. The woman in the hospital bed opposite me was having an ectopic pregnancy with twins. This was her second twin ectopic in six months. She was about to lose her remaining fallopian tube and, with it, her chance of conceiving naturally. About 10 members of her family were standing around her bed, shouting recriminations at her as though she had done it just to spite them. That night, staring at the ceiling after the surgery to remove the pregnancies and the fallopian tube, she began to wail. A nurse moved me to an empty ward, apologising for the woman’s raw, agonised howls. I didn’t need an apology, I completely understood her reaction.

For a year following the ectopic pregnancy, my career, marriage and other relationships suffered. I couldn’t concentrate at work, I didn’t want to go out with my friends, I found it impossible to focus on anything but the need to be pregnant. I was grieving the loss of the ectopic pregnancy and I was full of self-loathing at my failure to conceive.

I took Clomid, which is supposed to regulate periods, theoretically increasing the chances of getting pregnant. I took it for six months and every time it failed, I hated myself. I was stupid, I had failed, I should have done something differently (although what I could have done differently, I still don’t know).

A year after the ectopic pregnancy, almost to the day, I started IVF on the NHS. I was given a set of needles and a blue box to put them in. Before I could start injecting myself, I took Provera to make me have a period. Nothing happened – no period. I did a pregnancy test in the toilets at work. When I called my GP, I told her it must be a mistake – had the Provera given me a false positive? She laughed. After two years of trying, I was really, actually pregnant.

I now have two children. Two kids that look like potatoes. I know how lucky I am. I still can’t quite believe they’re real.

I had NHS counselling after the ectopic pregnancy, arranged by a sympathetic junior doctor as I lay in my hospital bed following surgery. Five years later, I’m still hugely grateful to the doctor and to the counsellor for her kindness and support. Sometimes you need to speak to someone who’s neutral, who doesn’t love you, and so won’t feel miserable that you’re miserable. You don’t have to worry that you’re upsetting them. The lost pregnancy isn’t their lost grandchild or niece or cousin. They’ll listen without trying to fix the problem for you.

When I look back on that time, I still find it terribly sad that I believed it was my fault. I want to cry when my friends who have experienced infertility think the same. It’s not their fault. It wasn’t my fault. According to the NHS, one in six couples – about 3.5 million people in the UK will have trouble conceiving. Yet it still isn’t widely discussed. I have many friends who have struggled with fertility issues, but who are reluctant to talk about it to anyone. They feel ashamed. They think it’s their fault. In some cases, even their own parents don’t know what they’ve been through.

Infertility is horrible and awful, and when people say IVF is a “lifestyle choice” that shouldn’t be available on the NHS, I stare at them in disbelief. Having a child isn’t like buying a yacht or going on holiday to the Bahamas. This dismissive, scathing attitude perpetuates the sense of shame around infertility, as though you’re self-indulgent for wanting a child.

I find it baffling and maddening when I hear arguments like “get a puppy” or “there are too many people in the world, anyway”. Are you really that crass and insensitive? I assume that people who make such statements have never seen someone they care about suffer the pain of infertility. Nobody should be mocked or called selfish for wanting to have a baby. If people were kinder towards those who are struggling to conceive, and if individuals with infertility problems talked about it more openly, perhaps this would dispel the sense of shame, and reduce cases of anxiety and depression among sufferers.