Sue Perkins felt "bereaved" when she was told she was infertile.
Sue Perkins
The 'Great British Bake Off' host was diagnosed with having a benign brain tumour in her pituitary gland, which meant she couldn't have children, in 2007 and admits she took the news harder than she expected she ever would.
She said: "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. I can't now have it as an out-of-sight, out-of-mind possibility, lurking.
"It's just 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."
The 45-year-old presenter was disappointed with how it was handled by her doctor, but it took her a year to complain.
Recalling her conversation with the medical professional at the time, she claims he told her it had "made it easier" to give her the sad news when she told him she was gay.
Speaking to The Sunday Times magazine, she questioned: "Am I not human and am I not somebody who could be a lovely, wonderful mother? ... Sometimes I get into the mindset that being heterosexual is a brave new world because you can conceive, and you can work out the rest of it, once you're pregnant.
"For me, it just felt like I was sitting there with a pencil going, 'What's the best way to have a daddy? What's the best way to have two mummies?' And it just felt like I just had a f***ing pencil in my hand, and this isn't the way to start being a mother and that's what was really painful."
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