'I dreaded being asked if I had children'

"Do you have children?"

For years, that was the question Connie Kerr dreaded.

Connie, from Manchester, said she had done "all the right things". She had a successful career, a husband and assumed children would follow.

But after four miscarriages in the space of two years, the future she imagined for herself was taken away.

She said she was reminded daily of what she had lost. From television adverts to workplace small talk, Connie felt everything reinforced the message that a woman without children was somehow incomplete.

More than a decade later, she has turned her experiences into a play and hopes to challenge the taboos that still surround childlessness, miscarriage and infertility.

Connie spoke to BBC News ahead of Baby Loss Awareness Week about why she wants to encourage conversations about a subject she believes is still taboo.

Connie said she thought becoming a mother would be a natural part of her life.

She fell pregnant within a year of trying for a family, but miscarried at eight weeks.

She said: "I'd heard about other people who'd experienced that who went on to have children, so I didn't think it was the end of the story."

Connie went on to have three further miscarriages between 2012 and 2014.

"When it keeps happening, you're not aware of the toll that is taking physically and mentally," she said.

"You're almost in a cycle of needing to keep going.

"You lose touch with reality a little bit."

Connie said having four miscarriages left her feeling isolated.

"To everybody on the outside, you're probably exactly the same person that you always were.

"But I started to feel like I didn't really have as much in common with some of my friends.

"I withdrew a little bit because I didn't want to upset people or make them feel like they couldn't be themselves around me as they became parents."

As well as withdrawing from her friendships, Connie said it put pressure on her relationship, too.

She said: "It almost became like the elephant in the room. Neither of us was willing or able to address it. And over a period of time that ended up being unsustainable."

Connie has never found out the underlying cause of her miscarriages. But she decided not to try to get pregnant again- saying she had reached a 'cut-off point'.

"I just couldn't do it anymore," she said.

Connie said the experience of being childless was made more difficult by society's expectation that women will become mothers.

"In popular culture I noticed everything, even life insurance adverts, all seemed geared towards people who had children," she said.

She said she became acutely aware of assumptions other people would make about her.

"There was an assumption I had children and that I wouldn't be available during school holidays.

"There was no malice intended. I think it's seen as an icebreaker. But there are other icebreakers."

For years, Connie said she dreaded going into new situations in case the question came up.

"I came up with a script for it when people asked the question.

"I would tell people 'not yet'."

But she has since decided to take back control of her own narrative with a new script.

She said she hopes her semi-autobiographical play, Spent Hen, will show others like her they are not alone.

Another positive thing to come from writing the play is that she now has an answer to the difficult question.

"I'm bolder now, and that feeling of not wanting to make people uncomfortable has lessened," she said.

"Now when I'm asked that question I say: 'I wasn't able to have children'.

"And the reaction has been fine. The conversation moves on but it has felt more authentic."

Baby Loss Awareness Week takes place from 9 to 15 October.

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