‘I was emotional, sad and just desperate’: Lisa Faulkner opens up about how her failed IVF treatment left her a walking mess.

She underwent three failed rounds of IVF and spent £35,000 trying to make her dream come true.Lisa Faulkner told the May 2012 issue of Red Magazine how traumatic and horrendous the whole process was on her and husband Chris Coghill.

She said: ‘When you’re faced with a chance of never carrying your own baby, all you want is to be a mother. It was a roller coaster. Every day I was injecting myself. ‘I put on two stone from drinking gallons of milk. I was a walking mess of hormones – crying all the time. I was emotional, sad and just desperate for it to work. It was horrendous.’ Lisa was left devastated after the injections failed to help her conceive and she couldn’t afford to pay any more money towards it.

She told the magazine that she didn’t think her relationship with Chris could have coped with any more strain.

She said: ‘We were strong, really strong, but it is so hard. In interviews, they would always ask about babies and I’d say, ‘Yes soon.’ ‘Then the next minute I’d be injecting myself in the toilet.’

Desolate and distraught, Lisa never considered adoption but her husband, who is nicknamed Stacks, was certain that they could do it.She told Red magazine: ‘It was Stacks who said, ‘We can do this.’ I was definitely more doubtful. ‘I think we underestimate how much we can love. I may not have carried Billie, but I love her absolutely. I couldn’t have made a better a little girl. She is my life.’

The actor lost all her confidence through IVF and adoption but found a new lease of life when she joined MasterChef.

She said: ‘So when I did ‘MasterChef’, I felt really small. I’d lost me. But something kicked in. At 38 years old, I discovered something else; something I was good at.’Lisa went on to win the TV show in 2010 and has now published her first cook book, Recipes from my Mother for my Daughter.Faulkner, who lost her mother to cancer when she was 16, said: ‘I didn’t mean to write a book with personal stories but it was like therapy for me. ‘It only dawned on me recently that I’m doing what my mum always dreamed of. I actually feel closer to her when I’m cooking.’