Sue Perkins on infertility diagnosis: 'It was very difficult...you're a woman, it's hard-wired into our DNA’

Difficult time: Sue Perkins opens up about being told she is infertile
Sue Perkins
Jennifer Ruby20 October 2015
The Weekender

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Sue Perkins has admitted that being told that she was infertile was ‘very difficult’ for her.

The Great British Bake Off star, who was told by her doctor that being unable to have children would be ‘easier’ because she is gay, has opened up about her diagnosis.

Speaking to Lorraine Kelly on Tuesday, she said: “It was very difficult...you're a woman, it's hard-wired into our DNA.

“Who knows, I might have been able to have kids had I undergone the treatment, there are some hardcore meds that you can take, but it was at that point in my life where I was cusping anyway on being perhaps a little too old,” she added.

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Perkins, 46, recently spoke out about the homophobia she experienced when enquiring about her inability to conceive.

She admitted that her doctor’s response to being told that she was a lesbian, was: “Oh, OK. Well, that makes it easier. You’re infertile. You can’t have kids.”

In her new memoir Spectacles, she writes: “Does a lesbian not have a fallopian tube? Am I not human, and [am] I not somebody who could be a lovely, wonderful mother?

“It really did hit me, as it hits a lot of people, I’m sure, when it’s too late, this is not going to happen…It’s not going to ever be part of my life.

“And, although I never yearned to physically have my own child, it felt like a bereavement. It really did.”

Speaking to Lorraine about her relationship with other half Anna Richardson, she said:

“There was something sort of magical in the air, absolutely there was, we have a real laugh, and that's what I want, I want joy in my life and I'm lucky to have it in abundance.”

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