A woman who gave birth to triplets at 41 after a decade spent trying to conceive said she felt “lonely, desperate and depressed” during her IVF journey and has written a book to provide an insight into her unique experience, as she believes managing her mindset “changed everything”.

Lisa Ashworth, 52, a career coach and author who lives in Guildford, Surrey, first started trying for children when she was 30 years old during her first marriage.

Doctors discovered Lisa had unexplained infertility and, although the couple wanted children, Lisa said the marriage started to “crumble” and they divorced.

She met her second husband, Rob, 52, a sales director, at 36, and after undergoing further medical tests, taking fertility drugs, and trying alternative methods such as changing her diet, reflexology, acupuncture, and even “boiling up Chinese herbs”, Lisa said conceiving naturally “wasn’t meant to be”.

Lisa is a career coach and author (Jo Sawers Photography/PA Real Life)

The couple subsequently decided to start their IVF journey, with each round costing approximately £4,000, and the first four were unsuccessful and included a miscarriage.

By the fourth round, as Lisa had reached her late 30s, her mental heath had started to deteriorate and she nearly gave up on her dream of becoming a mother.

“You feel like you’re walking under a cloud the whole time and you wear a mask a lot of the time, pretending everything is fine,” Lisa told PA Real Life.

“But deep down, you’re just carrying this burden and desperation of trying to get pregnant and not being able to do it… and it’s devastating.”

Lisa with her husband and three children (Collect/PA Real Life)

Now, however, after falling pregnant during the fifth IVF round at 40 and giving birth to triplets in June 2012, who she wishes to keep anonymous, Lisa has written a book called Fertility: Mindset And Meltdowns, to provide an insight into her unique journey as she believes managing her mindset “changed everything”.

“I just found that, outwardly, I was putting on this mask – like everything’s fine and cheery, happy – and then so often I would just go home and cry,” Lisa said.

“I talk about, at the beginning of the book, just crying on the bathroom floor after social events with families. It was a horrible time, I’ll never forget what we went through.

“It just seemed to go on and on and on, and it felt like it was defining me and everybody else seemed to have this life that I wanted except me.

“(But I believe) everything does happen at the right time, you just have to have faith.”

Lisa with her family on holiday in Greece last year (Collect/PA Real Life)

During IVF – a technique available to help people with fertility problems have a baby – an egg is removed from the woman’s ovaries and fertilised with sperm in a laboratory.

The fertilised egg, called an embryo, is then returned to the woman’s womb to grow and develop.

For Lisa, who was working in HR at the time, she underwent five rounds of IVF, costing a total of approximately £25,000 when including the cost of some additional tests as well, and during this time she felt lonely, heartbroken and depressed.

The first round was unsuccessful and the second round resulted in a miscarriage at seven weeks, which Lisa described as “devastating”.

Lisa at 35 weeks pregnant (Collect/PA Real Life)

Given she had been able to fall pregnant, however, she had “hope” for the third round – but this was unsuccessful as well.

“It’s such a lonely, private experience. I felt like there was nobody I could talk to about it… and I just felt desperate and depressed,” she said.

“Having to see all my friends have families, going to social events with families there and babies there, and people asking you about it all the time, you just feel so inadequate.

“You think, ‘Why are you not capable of this? Everybody else can do it’, and it’s just heartbreaking because you want it so much and it’s completely out of your control.”

After the third unsuccessful round, when Lisa was 39, the couple decided to take a break and they got married and went to the Maldives on their honeymoon.

Lisa on the day she gave birth in June 2012 (Collect/PA Real Life)

Lisa then started the fourth IVF round, as she felt more “relaxed” this time, but it was unsuccessful again – and at this point, she said she had a “major meltdown”.

Each round would involve blood tests, appointments, hormone injections, and given Lisa was “hiding” her struggles from everyone, it all became too much to bear.

“I had this major meltdown. It was literally coming up to my 40th birthday and I thought, ‘Right, I need to do something here’,” Lisa explained.

“I’ve either got to draw a line under this and forget it and do something else with our life, or I’ve got to do something different.

“They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results, so I packed my job in and took a few months off.”

Lisa with the triplets when they were one week old (Collect/PA Real Life)

Lisa has always loved self-help books and she started reading to find inspiration to get her “out of this hole”, and over time she realised that her mindset was holding her back.

Outwardly, she felt positive about her IVF journey, but internally, she thought it would not work, and when she realised this “conflict”, it was “a light bulb moment”.

Lisa started implementing “tools” in her daily life, including visualising falling pregnant, and she even placed a picture of a pregnant woman on her fridge with her face on it.

She started feeling more positive and, after her mother-in-law kindly offered to pay for the fifth IVF round, which Lisa and her husband accepted, they decided to try one last time.

Lisa walking with the triplets in 2013 (Collect/PA Real Life)

Lisa, who was 40 at the time, remembers the day she and her husband looked at the pregnancy test – it was an “amazing” moment she will never forget.

“We were lying in bed and I did the test, came back, and I couldn’t look at it, so I just gave it to my husband. I was watching him as he was looking at it,” she said.

“Then he just suddenly looked at me and he said, ‘pregnant’, and I thought, what? I just grabbed it off him and we couldn’t believe it.

“Not only did it work, but one of the embryos randomly split into two, so I ended up having triplets at 41 with twin boys, identical twin boys, and then a little girl.”

Lisa had to prepare 18 milk bottles for the triplets every day (Collect/PA Real Life)

Seeing the scan for the first time was “emotional” for Lisa and her husband, and the babies were delivered, healthy, at 35 weeks on June 11 2012 via a caesarean.

Although it was challenging at first, preparing 18 milk bottles each day, going through copious amounts of nappies, and using a three-seater buggy, Lisa and her husband “embraced it”.

Lisa later trained as a coach and realised that, although there are many medical books about pregnancy and fertility, she did not find many which discussed the “mental strain of trying to get pregnant” – and thus the idea for her own practical, self-help book, Fertility: Mindset And Meltdowns, was born.

Reflecting on her journey, Lisa believes working on her mindset “changed everything”, describing it as “the missing link”.

She hopes her book will help to give other women the emotional support and tools they need so they do not feel alone or “suffer in silence” like she did.

Lisa has written a book called Fertility: Mindset And Meltdowns (Collect/PA Real Life)

“After nearly 10 years of trying to get pregnant, I’d lost the faith inside,” Lisa explained.

“I could hear the mental chatter of, ‘This isn’t going to happen to me, everyone else gets pregnant except me, there’s something wrong with me, that’s not going to work’.

“It hit me like a tonne of bricks that my outward was not in line with my inward. They were in complete conflict with each other, and it was a real light bulb moment.”

She added: “Now, we’ve got three lovely, happy, healthy children and we’re so lucky, it’s all been worth it.”

To find out more about Lisa and her book, visit her website here: lisaashworthcoaching.co.uk.