'You feel so guilty': ITV news presenter Andrea Byrne opens up about fertility issues with husband Lee Byrne

The 45-year-old news presenter, who appears on ITV Wales and occasionally the national programme, married former rugby internationalist Lee Byrne in 2012, but had revealed that the couple were hit with seven-year long fertility issues that impacted their marriage. Speaking to the BBC, Byrne said that the issues felt that her husband would be “better off” without her, adding: "You feel so guilty.”

The couple started to try to conceive immediately after getting married and contacted a fertility clinic after having no luck. After undergoing an ultrasound, Byrne, who has written about her experience in her new book ‘Desperate Rants and Magic Pants’, was told that she had an issue with the thickness of her womb.

What followed was years of tests and intrusive procedures. This included multiple rounds of IFV. She said: "To be honest, the number of cycles, I couldn’t even tell you," she said We also tried lots of different things on top of the IVF, things that we were advised might work from different specialists.

"We also had some positive pregnancy tests and thought we were pregnant, but unfortunately we had losses as well. So it was a real rollercoaster of emotion.”

Byrne said that the fertility issues took their toll on her and her husband’s relationship. She said: "I remember I used to say to Lee, and he used to get quite cross with me, because I used to say 'oh just go and find somebody else, somebody else could do this more easily, just go and find another woman'. And he would say to me 'goodness, we are in this together'."

They eventually welcomed daughter Jemima in 2019. She was conceived naturally, with Byrne saying that she “defied science”. Byrne added: "I feel very conscious when I'm telling my story, that maybe it's easier to tell because we did get the ending that we had. But I still feel it's important to talk about, because I know how lonely we were during that journey."