Last week a doctor looked at my passport, looked at my Anti-Mullerian Hormone level (AMH) and told me to go home and grieve. I am 45 years old. I have not come this far to grieve.

I was born in early summer 1981 on the wild edge of Ireland, number seven of nine children. 

I joined my family living in a traditional thatched cottage, nestled in a dell beside a stream that ran down from the loughs at the top of the valley to the sea at Glencolmcille in Co Donegal. 

My father had built a lane over the bog for easier access to the property.

The cottage was my childhood dream. Playing all day in our ‘back yard’ — the hills of Donegal — endless hours in the rocks and caves of the valley, or by the beach in the summer.

Our mother tended her large garden, baked daily and made cheese and yoghurt from the milk of our goats, carefully brought from Somerset to start their simple, self-sufficient life in Ireland.

I think about that childhood a lot now. The foundation laid in those years — the microbiome built on raw goat’s milk, homegrown vegetables, wild fish and fresh air. I genuinely believe it is the reason I am still standing.

We now know that the microbiome, the ecosystem of bacteria in our gut, is formed in early life and shapes our immune system, our hormonal health and our resilience for decades to come. 

My parents knew this long before it became fashionable. We never saw a doctor and my mother went on to become a homeopath.

They were simply decades ahead of their time. Through everything that came after, my body kept going. And a lot came after.

I have never done things the conventional way. I had always wanted to be a human rights lawyer. 

I put myself through law school, worked my way into a top Irish law firm and had a career I had genuinely earned. 

Then I met someone and left it all behind by moving to New York, gave up everything I had worked for. He turned out to be someone very different to whom I thought he was.

I modelled, studied acting, did a spell in LA, trained as a personal trainer in London and later studied holistic health coaching and plant-based nutrition. 

Years in the modelling industry had left their mark — I struggled with bulimia for a long time, and it was strength training that saved me. 

It gave me respect for my body instead of punishment. I stopped wanting to be thin and started wanting to be strong.

I built a life that looked, from the outside, like it was constantly starting over. 

So it’s fair that I know what a lot of you will be saying “She left it too late. She made her choices. What did she expect?” I expected life, I suppose. I just didn’t expect it to be quite so much.

I had just recovered from that relationship when I met my ex husband. Looking back, I can see I had a type. 

I met him when I was 34, fresh from some time in LA, just back for my youngest brother’s wedding. He was charming in the way that certain men are. 

A friend told me afterwards that he was there when he first saw me in London and said: “she’s mine.” I didn’t stand a chance. He wanted to meet all my family, I brought him home to Ireland, he even charmed my mother. 

We had a proper Catholic wedding, back home in West Clare.

What happened behind closed doors was different. There were periods of warmth, the man I had fallen in love with fully present. And then there were other times.

I knew deep down on my wedding day I was making a mistake, but I wanted a family so badly and the idea of starting over yet again was too painful. 

How many women settle with the same thoughts? The body clock is a cruel pressure and it drives women into the arms of the wrong men. It is never worth it.

At 38 I knew I wanted a child. Badly. I had wanted to be a mother for ten years by then. I convinced myself that if we had a baby, things would settle, soften. 

Women have told themselves this story for as long as there have been women. I was not the first. I will not be the last.

I got pregnant the first month I tried. I remember the morning I found out, visiting my aunt and uncle in the English countryside, my aunt driving me to her doctor on the Monday morning. The test was positive. I still remember the happiness I felt that morning.

I called him, naively so excited. His reaction was very different to mine. He drove back to London without saying goodbye. 

I put on my running clothes and ran 10 kilometres as fast as I could. I then made a choice and I have carried that grief — private, unspoken, enormous — for many years. 

I tell you this because I know there are women reading this holding the same thing alone. And alone is a very heavy way to carry it.

After all this I knew I had to leave the marriage. I was shaking as I crept out, waiting for the lift on the ninth floor was one of the longest minutes of my life, fearful that he would wake up and find the packed car and my plan. 

I jumped in my car and left for the last time, drove to Holyhead and took the ferry to Ireland.

One week later, in March 2020, the country went into lockdown. I was two months from turning 39.

I spent those months in shock. No income, no home of my own. I lived with my brother and his pregnant wife, keeping my pain to myself as much as I could. 

Eventually I opened a small weightlifting studio, built a community, and began to understand that the work I was doing with clients was inseparable from the work I was doing on myself.

My Heart Rate Variablity, a measure of nervous system health, was at eight during this time — a number that told its own story. 

I healed the same way I now help others heal — through movement, nutrition, breathwork, and the slow rebuilding of daily habits, most importantly recovering from insomnia and night sweats.

What followed were years of starting over, dating men who were never quite right. Women are still not honest enough about how hard it is out there. 

We do not say: this is lonely, and frightening, and the clock inside me is getting louder until it’s almost deafening but we try not to settle, try not to end up in yet another soul destroying situation that wastes yet more precious years.

I knew I needed a fresh start and to work on myself. I was in Bali when I finally got clear. Forty-four years old, alone, training as a meditation teacher, rebuilding my nervous system one day at a time. 

And then I walked the Camino de Santiago, 800 kms across northern Spain, and somewhere on that path, I met my current partner.

He is kind. He is present. He loves me in a way that is quiet and steady, the way the good things are. And we are trying for a baby. I have just turned 45. I am in excellent health. 

My tubes are open. My uterus is normal. AMH, or Anti-Mullerian Hormone, is the marker used to indicate ovarian reserve - how many eggs a woman has remaining. It is measured in pmol/L in Ireland. 

When I was 40, I took the first steps to freeze some eggs with The Lister Fertility Clinic in London. My AMH was 8.24 pmol/L.

Looking at that and all my other test results the Dr said ‘If you were to try to have a baby it is entirely likely you would fall pregnant by yourself.’

I listened to the advice of some people and I decided not to proceed. Mistake alert: freeze your eggs as early as you can— do not wait, thinking you have time because you do not.

At 42, a doctor in Ireland told me I had excellent fertility and hoped to see me back soon with a baby — though she warned me my fertility would ‘fall off a cliff around 45.’ 

I remember those words clearly. I felt relief that I still had some time, although the clock was getting louder. In October 2025 I tested again — 7.78 pmol/L, with a good follicle count. 

The doctor described it as diminished ovarian reserve but said I had the fertility of a healthy 38 -year-old.

By May 2026 my AMH had dropped to 3.36 pmol/L. Two days before my 45th birthday. The cliff.

Last week I went to see a fertility specialist, looking for advice, support and a prescription.

 I brought every blood result I have, years of data, my hormone panels, my supplement protocol. 

A full report. By every marker I am in the top three per cent of healthy women my age.

He asked for my passport. Looked at my age. Yes, he said, 1981 — checking again. He looked at my AMH and hardly glanced at the papers I had brought in.

He told me I had a 0.0001% chance of conception. No lifestyle interventions could affect the outcome. 

He refused to prescribe the supplement I came for. He told me to go home and grieve the fact that I would probably never have a baby.

I walked out in tears. I am not delusional, I know my numbers and I know my chances are low. And here’s the thing - although my age is the biggest indication of my egg reserve and quality, we cannot change our age, but we can do a lot to improve egg quality. 

To get pregnant you only need one good egg, and of course healthy sperm. 

Everything — sleep, nutrition, stress, the right supplements — affects the environment those eggs develop in. That is not wishful thinking. That is the research.

The worst thing a doctor can do is tell a patient she is powerless. 

This is categorically not true. Being reduced to two numbers on a page by a man who spent two minutes in the room with me —that is not medicine. That is not care.

It takes honesty to face your mistakes. And bravery to refuse to be defined by them. Courage to believe in a better life. 

Recently I went to confession for the first time in many years, in a small church in France. 

I told the priest everything. I told him I did not know if I deserved to be a mother. He listened with complete compassion. 

He told me to name the child, go to the cathedral and light a candle, ask for forgiveness and ask the child to pray for me. 

Beautiful advice that I did in fact take, adding a letter and now I pray for that soul every day.

Sometimes, not always, but sometimes, if you do the work, you get another chance at happiness. I am 45. I am taking action for my future. And I am not done.

• Cristíona Aston is an Irish holistic health coach, certified personal trainer, and meditation teacher based in France. See cristionaaston.com and @cristionaaston