There's part of me that wants to have children and this is part of the grieving process for me. I'm 35. I started working through the stuff from my past 4 or 5 years ago. From the beginning, there was this awareness 'I wonder if I can work through the trauma in time for me to be able to have children before I'm infertile/too old but I'm scared I won't be able to and I'll get to my 40s and wish I'd had kids'.

I never wanted to have children until I started facing up to the trauma a few years ago. Now that I'm writing this, I remember in my teens hating my life so much that I was conciously trying to make myself infertile (eg not being careful with hygiene with tampons). I don't think I've ever told that to anyone. I've only just remembered it.

I don't want to have kids until I'm mentally well enough - partly because I'm worried about screwing up their lives because I'm still mentally pretty messed up (I can mostly fake that things are ok at work and with friends, but I go to pieces at home most days). And partly because babies and children are still very triggery for me. I dread hearing a baby cry or scream when I'm at the shops or whatever.

Last year we got a cat for the first time. So hard. I couldn't cope with her being needy. Brought back so many bad memories. I've worked through a lot of it now, but I still find it so hard when the cat is being demanding when I'm not having a good day. Made me realise how far I still need to go before I could even think about having kids.

And even if I miracously recovered completely tomorrow and so did my partner - we're both at high risk of infertility because of particular things that happened to us at children.