WHILE most parents will look at their four-year-olds starting school next week in a state of disbelief, this really is a day that Kate Jackson wondered if she would ever see.

Kate had always wanted a family of her own, but when she felt ready to try for children, life turned out to be a lot less straightforward than she had hoped.

When Kate, a fundraiser from Shirley, met her future husband in 2010, he had already had a vasectomy.

"He had been married and had a daughter, and after making the decision not to have any more children, he had a vasectomy in the early 2000s," says the 42-year-old.

"He was happy to have a reversal, but it was unsuccessful. It was very disappointing, but it made us both realise just how much we wanted to have a family together."

Kate and her partner, Dave, were referred to Wessex Fertility Clinic.

"Dave's sperm was tested and it was all fine, so then they started doing some routine tests on me. I was 36 and was considered a good age to get pregnant, and we expected it all to be quite straightforward.

"But then a test showed that my egg reserve was very low, 0.5 out of 10, and that the eggs were of a very poor quality.

"Suddenly it was all about me and about what procedures I needed so that we could try to have a baby by IVF."

Kate and Dave went through their first cycle of IFV but it was unsuccessful.

A second cycle had to be stopped as of the two eggs that were harvested, one was a cyst and the other was immature.

It was a terrible blow to Kate and Dave.

"We were told that the chance of having a baby was 100,000 to one. I remember the consultant saying 'Kate, you have more chance of winning the lottery this Saturday than you do of having a baby'," she remembers.

"We were devastated. Having a family when we wanted to was something I'd always just taken for granted. It seemed really strange that it was so difficult to come by."

But Kate and Dave weren't ready to give up on having their own biological baby just yet.

"I had faith in the experts and I knew that they were telling us what they were telling us with the best will in the world, but I needed to come to the decision myself and know that we had definitely come to the end of the road with IVF, so I said I wanted to do it again," says Kate.

"We went through the whole cycle and produced four embryos that were excellent quality. Two were implanted and two were frozen."

Kate says that finding out that she was pregnant came as a huge surprise, even though they knew that the process was going well.

"Dave was convinced that I was pregnant, but I didn't feel I could go there," says Kate.

"He did the test and said 'oh, it doesn't look like you are'. Then we looked at the kit and realised that he'd left the lid on! So we did the test again and it came up with the blue cross straight away! We were so excited."

The couple had to wait three weeks before the foetus would be big enough for a scan.

"I could hardly believe it when I saw that little heart pumping away," she says.

"After that we went away on a holiday for three weeks, and when we came back I paid for another scan because I wanted to be really sure that there was a baby in my tummy."

The pregnancy was straightforward, although the baby had to be delivered by emergency c-section, and the couple's first child, Martha, was born on April 6, 2014.

"I don't think I really relaxed throughout the pregnancy until someone said 'here's your baby'," says Kate.

"I knew how hard it had been to get to that point."

Kate and Dave took baby Martha to visit the staff at Wessex Fertility, where someone reminded them that they still had two other frozen embryos.

"I thought 'I'm not there yet!' but I knew that I would go back."

As Kate had had a caesarian, she had to wait at least a year to give her body chance to recover and also wanted to spend time just with Martha. But as the friends she had met through playgroups, who had children the same age as Martha, began to fall pregnant a second time, she and Dave decided that it was time to see if they could have another baby.

"We went back in January 2016," says Kate.

"It was different in the sense that I had Martha and as much as I wanted her to have a sibling, I had to take strength from the fact that if it didn't work out, I did have a healthy baby, and one who I'd been told I had more chance of winning the lottery than having."

Although the procedure went well, this pregnancy was less straightforward than the first.

"I knew soon after implantation that I was pregnant, but ten days later I had a really big bleed. I thought it was all over. It was awful. I phoned the clinic and they said that there wasn't anything that they could do and told me to put my feet up and not do anything until they could scan me in six days.

"After 24 hours the blood started to dry up but I thought it was obviously a miscarriage but I went for the scan and they said 'there's your baby'.

"Luckily the mass of blood had come from outside of the womb. It was like finding out I was pregnant all over again."

Martha's little sister Molly was born by elective c-section on November 14, 2016.

The girls are classed as biological twins. Martha has some understanding of how she and Molly were conceived.

"We often go past the clinic and she knows that it's a special place for us," says Kate.

"Dave and I got married on August 16, 2014, and Martha is in our wedding photos. When she looks at them, she says 'that's me, but Molly was still in the freezer!'"

Kate says that she can hardly believe that Martha is now set to start school.

"I don't know if I ever really thought the day would come," she says.

"But I never thought of giving up on having a child. I was quite focused and did everything I could to make it happen.

"If I hadn't been able to get pregnant with my own eggs, we were looking into going to a clinic in Spain to use an egg donor, as they offer anonymity to the donors, so I would feel that I was definitely the baby's mummy."

Kate has supported a family member who has had IVF and would encourage anyone going through treatment to stay positive.

"The experts really do help you make your dreams come true," she says.

"We are incredibly grateful to the clinic. We have a family because of them.

"We won't be going back for a third time though. Well, not unless we really do win the lottery!"