For women in their thirties the issues surrounding fertility are all too apparent. In a friendship group, someone is usually pregnant while somebody else is desperate to be. Conversations about hormone levels and ovulation windows are frequent and candid. Even those women who are blissfully happy in their decision not to procreate often become fluent by association in the language of IVF, egg freezing and conception folklore (a friend currently performs headstands after sex to usher her partner’s sperm in the right direction).
The same cannot, in general, be said of men of a similar age. In his late twenties Ciaran Hannington and his wife, Jenn, had spent a year trying to conceive when they decided to seek medical advice. As doctors poked and prodded