Meteorologist Joanna Donnelly has opened up about her past struggles with fertility, and how she suffered seven miscarriages.
She joined Met Éireann in 1995, working as a meteorological officer, before being promoted to meteorologist in 2000.
She has been working as a forecaster on RTÉ since 2002.
She has three children - Nicci, Tobias and Casper - and is married to fellow forecaster, Harm Luijkx.
But between Nicci and Tobias it was not plain sailing, as she told Ciara Kelly on Newstalk Breakfast.
"It's a long time ago now, he's gone off to secondary school, but when I start talking about it it always just seems like that happened last week.
"You're so naïve when you start into parenting... you spend so many years trying to avoid pregnant for a start that you just think that, when you stop taking the pill or you stop using precautions, that pregnancy will happen.
"And it did happen, but then I was having these miscarriages all the time.
"The first one is devastating and the second one is crushing, and then you start to panic and think 'Oh'.
"And then the years are ticking by and you're getting that little bit older and people are asking you 'Are you going to have another one?' or 'Time for another one', and your friends are all having their other ones.
"So it was a crushing time in my life now and I know that it's part of my life".
"Thankfully I found some women that were in the same boat as me and we had each other to talk to.
"My partner in Pomegranate, Fiona McPhilips, was my rock and I think I was hers as well during that time.
Image via @JoannaDonnellyL on Twitter"We were both quite similar in our attitude and approach to the whole situation that we were in.
"We're both intelligent women with a lot of information at our fingertips - we knew what was going on but we couldn't fix it, and that's the most incredibly frustrating thing I think for any situation you're ever in: when you know that you're in trouble but you can't do anything about it.
"That feeling of frustration really can eat you up as well.
"Thankfully I did have women to talk to, I probably didn't talk about it - as you say - in real life".
In an interview with The Irish Times, Joanna said she was furious all the time.
On this, she told Ciara: "That was honestly how I remember feeling, very quick to anger and furious at this incompetence.
"And I'm doing everything right, I'm relaxing even - you know that thing where they tell you 'Well you just relax' - I almost went on a cruise", she said.
Joanna said she never thought of having just one child: "I think there was always hope that we could fix it, that we could get over this."
Joanna Donnelly and her husband Harm Luijkx. Image via @JoannaDonnellyL on TwitterOn people's husband or partner, she said: "I think it's incredibly hard on the partner too - because they're not bleeding and they're not the ones that this is happening directly to, but it is happening to them.
"And they're impotent in their efforts to help, they can't do anything at all."
"Harm was an absolute rock, it brought us even stronger together - it impacts on a lot of relationships.
"But thankfully we were able to get through it together".
On her infertility charity Pomegranate, she said: "When we had Casper naturally, we were eager then to be able to try and help somebody.
"I can't bear the idea that women, and their partners of course, are going through this thing and there's no help in Ireland.
"I didn't mean to set up a charity, neither did Fiona, we just wanted to help somebody."
"It just so happened that when we went to look to help somebody, there wasn't anybody that we could just give the money to.
"So we said 'well, probably the best thing to do is to set up a charity', and then other people that also wanted to help have helped us through the years - and some have helped us in huge ways - to distribute that extra little bit that they have to people that don't get any help, there's no help out there".
She has this advice for anyone going through the same issues.
"Talk, talk to your friends, talk to your family - and it's not anybody's fault.
"It's medicine, it's a medical condition - there's a thing called 'unexplained infertility', and that doesn't mean that there's nothing wrong, it just means that they don't know what it is in fertility.
"And fertility is incredibly complex".
"Just because they can't find what's wrong with you doesn't mean there's nothing wrong with you.
"Just keep at it and trust in the medicine and you'll get there".
Anyone affected by issues raised in this article can contact fertility charity Pomegranate on info@pomegranate.ie
