I was simply a sperm provider; CASE STUDY

The experience of in vitro fertilisation treatment is one that John and Wendy [not their real names] have done their best to blank out of their minds.

They underwent IVF treatment for a total of six years, but Wendy failed to conceive and in the end they adopted instead.

John, in particular, looks back with a shudder at a process that was "so unpleasant I have tried to wipe my memory of it." He said: "IVF is never going to be much fun, and I think we knew that, but it takes years and it does get you down."

They both found the procedure de-humanising and far-removed from the joy most couples go through in expecting a baby. Instead, they felt they were treated in an offhand way by medical staff who did not see infertility as a true problem.

John felt he was relegated to a sperm provider, expected to come up with the goods whatever the situation. "You had to go down a corridor and masturbate in the toilet," he said. "You could hear the cleaners talking outside while you were in there. There were no facilities - it was, like, `here's a jar ... ' "

"It was awful. You've got to produce a sperm sample that is the best you can do, and I don't know how you were meant to provide this in these circumstances."

John felt he was perceived as no more than "a support role for my wife". For Wendy, the situation was no easier. "At the time, there wasn't very much money in the NHS for fertility treatment so the doctors who gave it were struggling on a very small budget in a little corner of the hospital."

"It made me very angry a lot of the time the way we were treated," said John. "My wife and I were never really properly diagnosed. One doctor eventually said to me that I could father the population of Bangladesh and there was nothing wrong with my fertility, which was totally at odds with everything else we had been told."

"You're meant to be gearing yourself up to go to these sessions and it is terribly, terribly stressful. The attitude you feel that people have is that `well, you're not ill'.

"We ended up hating the doctor who treated us. He made a lot of money out of us. I didn't enjoy any of it."