Away from the headlines, countless couples suffer private pain of infertility

The Foreign Secretary revealed the difficulties he and his wife Ffion have encountered in trying to start a family, including multiple miscarriages. He said: "We are aware that the stress of infertility can often strain a marriage, but in our case, thankfully, it has only brought us closer together. It has been an immensely traumatic and painful experience but our marriage is strong and we will face whatever the future brings together."

His moving statement will have struck a heartfelt chord with many couples up and down the country who have struggled unsuccessfully to start a family. But it also puts the spotlight on a subject that is frequently swept under the carpet.

Infertility is defined by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) as "failing to get pregnant after two years of regular unprotected sex".

After pregnancy itself, it is the most common reason for women aged between 20 and 45 to see their GP. It's estimated that as many as one in six couples in the UK – about 3.5 million people – are affected by infertility at some point. And although the majority of these will become pregnant naturally given time, a significant number won't.

Isla and Paul McGuckin spent the best part of a decade trying to conceive. After a whirlwind romance in their early 20s they got married and settled down in Yorkshire and began building successful careers in marketing and IT. "We got married relatively young so we didn't feel in any rush to start a family," says Isla, who met Paul after graduating from university in Huddersfield.

By the time she was 29 they decided to follow some of their friends and colleagues and start trying for a baby. "I just assumed it would happen, I thought I would be celebrating my 30th birthday with a baby, but it didn't happen," she says. Initially, though, she wasn't too concerned.

"We tried for a year and then another year and I read somewhere that if you had been trying for two years without success that you should go to your doctor. So we both went for some basic tests and then I was sent to a fertility specialist which was a huge shock, because I thought we'd go to the doctors and there would be something we'd overlooked and we'd go back to trying and everything would be fine," she says. "People don't really talk about infertility but it was amazing when I mentioned it to a few friends just how many of them said they'd had problems."

The couple underwent a battery of tests which showed that Paul's sperm count appeared normal and there was nothing amiss with Isla's ovulation. At which point the doctors said the couple were suffering from what is known as unexplained infertility. "I thought they would find out what was wrong and be able to fix it and it was not knowing that was really hard," she says. "Everything else was in place. I was happily married, I had a loving husband and great friends but there was this emptiness. You grieve over something that hasn't happened, it's a strange, intangible situation."

For the next 12 months they tried a variety of fertility drug

treatments and still nothing happened. "I'd been prodded and probed and taken the drugs but we thought 'this isn't how we wanted it to be.' I got to the stage where I wanted a baby very badly, but not at any price. Our relationship has always been loving and relaxed but the desire to have a baby started to become all-encompassing."

What made it worse was the almost daily reminders of what they saw as their failure to turn themselves from partners into parents.

"Whenever I found out that a friend was pregnant my first response was to be happy for them, but part of me would think 'it's not their turn' and jealousy would creep in and then I would feel a huge sense of guilt for thinking that way, it was horrible." She says she also began questioning her own self worth. "It sounds melodramatic when I say it now but at the time I thought, 'what's the point of me if I can't have children?'."

If all this wasn't enough Isla also suffered the cruel agony of becoming pregnant only to miscarry at 10 weeks. It was around this time that the couple decided to move to Ireland, where Paul's family lived, in a bid for a fresh start. She wrote a book, Pink For A Girl, about her and Paul's battle to conceive. "It started out as a diary of me trying to make sense of things and trying to find the answers to my questions."

But just as she had given up all hope of starting a family, the unthinkable happened. "I'd been feeling a bit sick and put it down to a bug, but I was talking to a friend one day who asked if I was still feeling sick and that's when the penny dropped that I might be pregnant."

"People say 'you must have been delighted' but I was shocked more than anything because I'd got used to the idea of not having kids. Then Tallulah was born and it was the happiest day of my life," she says.

Isla is now 39 and she and Paul and their 18-month-old daughter are happily settled in Donegal, on the west coast of Ireland.

"It's been a roller coaster of emotions," she says, looking back on the past 10 years, "and unless you've been through it yourself it's hard to understand.

"When I became pregnant it came right out of the blue and I don't want to give people false hope because there are some women who will never have babies. But if I could go back and give myself some advice it would be to say, 'relax, it can happen', because now I have Tallulah and she is the icing on the cake of my life."

n Infertility Network UK provides information and support about infertility. For more information visit www.infertilitynetworkuk. com or call freephone 0800 008 7464.