Comedian Sara Pascoe said she is determined to share a positive message around IVF during her stand-up performances as it is a “privilege that science can help us this much”.
The 41-year-old met her husband, Australian comic Steen Raskopoulos, when she was in her late thirties and the couple had tried to conceive but it “wasn’t happening”.
She told Women’s Health UK: “It was tough, made more so by those around me who seemingly got pregnant easily. When I see my stand-up from that time, my defensiveness about others having kids is cringey.
“I feared honesty would make people feel sorry for me – not ideal for a comedian.”
Pascoe said the couple eventually had their one-year-old son through IVF, following a miscarriage.
“This means I’ll always understand what it’s like to be ‘infertile’, I still see a therapist who specialises in baby loss,” she said.
“In my show I’m determined to normalise IVF and share a positive story that’s like, ‘It’s a privilege that science can help us this much’. But through grumpiness and jokes rather than uber-sincerity.”
Pascoe, who took over from Joe Lycett to present the BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee, said there is a “lot of unintended comedy in motherhood”.
She said: “People say it gets better after four years of misery – imagine getting that advice in any other context. The one thing I miss is tiredness you can fix with sleep.
“These days, my tiredness is stubborn.”
The comedian also said it “bothered” her during her thirties not knowing if she was going to have children or not.
She added: “My worry was: my life is really great now, but I don’t want to regret (not being a mum) when I’m 50. It was like making a hypothetical decision based on a sadness I hadn’t felt yet.
“The way society ties women’s success to marriage and babies weighed heavily on me; I think women are complicit in reinforcing it.”
The full Sara Pascoe interview can be read in the January/February issue of Women’s Health UK which is on sale now.