When it came to babies, Cathy Franklin and John Sweeney knew what they wanted.
They desired three children and they intended to wait until they were married a year-and-a-half before trying for the first. But, five months into their marriage, the couple brought forward their plans.
They'd just seen Cathy's newborn niece and had fallen in love with babies.

"When we saw her, we said, 'Oh my God'. We went gaga" says Cathy, who immediately began trying to conceive.

But the couple, who live in Midleton, Co. Cork, couldn't have known they were about to embark on a dizzying emotional rollercoaster that would make them revisit time and again the same sickening circuit of elation and despair. Nor could they have guessed that, three-and-a-half years into this journey, they would decide – though still only in their early 30s – to abandon all artificial fertility treatments.

Yet Cathy (34) never assumed getting pregnant would be easy. "We started trying in December 2004. Our goal was to have a bump by the following Christmas. We never assumed it would happen straight away but we were gutted when it didn't.

"As the months progressed, we both felt a bit of a failure. Suddenly, my other sister was expecting. I wasn't jealous. I was frustrated, thinking when will it be my turn."

With their Christmas 2005 deadline looming and nothing happening, Cathy made a New Year appointment with her GP, who referred them to a fertility clinic. It took Cathy three months to pluck up the courage to make the appointment. "I just wasn't ready to take it out of the bedroom to the next level. I didn't want to be told there was a problem and it was on my side. No matter how much you love your other half, you don't want to be told you're the one with the problem."

Finally, armed with a battery of clear medical reports – John had undergone semen analysis, while Cathy had had hormonal blood tests – the couple arrived at the fertility clinic in July '06.

A laparoscopy advised by the clinic found a 'cellophane-like substance' wrapped around Cathy's fallopian tubes, which doctors believe was caused by a sever bout of colic she suffered as a 10-year-old.

"The tubes were squeezed so tightly nothing could have got through. The doctors cleared one tube and got the other almost clear and sent us away for six months to try again. I was so relieved and full of hope because it seemed like we wouldn't have to go through fertility treatment."

But nothing happened and in July '07 – on their third wedding anniversary – John injected Cathy with the fertility drug that would be a prelude to their first IUI (Intrauterine Insemination) attempt. "We thought it being our wedding anniversary was a good omen, but we promised ourselves we wouldn't get our hopes up. I got my period 11 days after ovulation.

"It was awful. We both felt like massive failures. There were a lot of tears – we just held each other for half an hour. But, even though we were gutted, we had the medication at home to start the second round of IUI, so we did on that very same day."

This time around, Cathy's ovaries produced too many egg follicles and the clinic – worried about the possibility of a multiple pregnancy – instructed her to have some removed in a procedure called aspiration. "When I went in, they found it was too late – I'd already ovulated – so they sent us home with a ban, to stay out of the bedroom."They said the risk to me and to any babies of a multiple pregnancy were too high."

By now, the couple had had it with IUI. John is a warehouse operative for a medical devices company, while at the time Cathy worked as a freelance translator. They knew another IUI would use up funds they needed for the much more expensive IVF.

Describing the IVF experience as "atrocious", Cathy says "I over-responded to the drugs. Your ovaries are supposed to be like walnuts – mine were like golf balls, they got so swollen. You're ejecting every night for three weeks. You're getting hot flushes and night sweats and you can't sleep. On the days between egg collection and transfer of the embryos to the uterus, you ring the clinic every morning. First it's to find out if any eggs have fertilised, then to see if the embryos are surviving.
"You dread those calls. It's out of your control at that stage but you're petrified that you've paid almost €5,000 and all the embryos could be gone."

Cathy had one embryo transferred on that first IVF treatment and an early pregnancy test proved positive. She says: "We were too worried to get excited. We finally decided to believe it and I was booked into the clinic for a pregnancy scan.
"A couple of days before it, I was sitting at home watching a movie and I felt terrible cramps.
"I watched the whole movie, waiting for John to come home and then I had to go to the loo and I was bleeding and John came in at that minute and said, 'How's my pregnant wife?', and I just bawled."
Even after this emotional wringer, the couple still had "just enough money" for another IVF – they paid €4,500 for a second treatment in April '08. But this too ended in dashed hopes.

"Physically, my body couldn't cope with it – emotionally we couldn't go through it again. John was more adamant than me that we wouldn't do more IVF – he found it very hard watching me go through it."

For Cathy, the emotional fallout continued and – following panic attacks last summer – she went for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

"Some people use it to help them get pregnant. For me, it's to help me deal with the fact that I couldn't get pregnant. Now, I'm no longer upset by other people's announcements of pregnancy."

She and John were surprised at how well they coped as a couple with the turmoil of the last few years, but she admits that trying to conceive took its toll on their love life.
"Timing love-making around ovulation makes it routine, a chore, something you have to do rather than want to do. Now we're not time things anymore, it's a lot better. That major pressure is gone."

Explaining that she loves being around children, Cathy is now training as a primary schoolteacher. She and John have also started an online company (www.HappyBumps.com), selling FDA and CE- approved inexpensive pregnancy and ovulation kits, which they source abroad.
"When we started buying these kits from the chemist, they were on offer but still cost us a fortune. We started buying online but we were charged a lot for postage. There's nobody selling these tests locally on easily navigable websites, so we're filling that gap," says Cathy, who's happy for clients who email her with tales of positive pregnancy tests.

"It's not that I have no hope around us having a baby now, but I'm more accepting than hopeful. I'm positive about the future, whatever it brings, but I won't say it will bring children because maybe it won't."