Sitting on a straight-backed yellow armchair, my eyes half closed, I have no choice but to allow the hot tears to course down my cheeks.
The hypnotherapist speaks softly, words which feel like a river washing over me in my trance-like state.
I cry helplessly like this for more than an hour as I revisit vivid scenes from my childhood, playing Scrabble with my grandmother in a room filled with her blue and white Wedgwood china collection.
I am ten years old, and in the sunlit room someone tells me that ‘Justin would be proud’. And finally I think I understand.
Trance: Connie Fisher, left, is hypnotised by Andrea Yearsley, right, who the former Songs of Praise presenter says unlocked the reason she'd never wanted children
I am under the hypnotherapist’s spell in a clinic in Cardiff as part of an attempt to uncover why, at the relatively late age of 34, I have felt undecided about having children.
Friends around me have begun and then expanded their families while I – despite a strong, seven-year marriage – have remained in a state of indecision.
But the hypnosis, filmed for a BBC documentary Baby Love, was startling and revelatory. For the first time, it made me confront the idea that I have a deep-seated, subconscious fear of loss. And it’s one that stems back to my own childhood.
Justin was my twin, the sidekick I never knew. We grew side-by-side in my mother’s womb but only one of us survived.
Justin was older by a few moments, both of us born by caesarean section while Mum, then 36, was under a general anaesthetic.
I was small enough to be held in the palm of my father’s hand. But my brother was even more fragile and tragically died just after birth. It was – it still is – devastating for my parents.
Emotional journey: Connie, pictured on the set of TV show This Morning, says she now understands the reason for her indecision
I cannot comprehend how hard it must have been for them to return from hospital with just one child. Every birthday of mine must have been filled with mixed emotion for them, each milestone shadowed by a missing half.
Somehow my parents never quite found the right moment to tell me what happened. The first time I can recall him being mentioned was during that childhood Scrabble game.
But being a surviving twin has formed a part of my personality. They had no more children and, as an only child, I sometimes feel lonely but never alone.
I am always striving to be more than I am. And I possess all the traits of a thoroughbred Gemini – I can never quite make up my mind. But what I had not recognised was that the loss of Justin had left such a profound mark on my psyche.
My procrastinating over parenthood had concerned me enough to take part in the documentary, which explored modern approaches to motherhood but became a rather more personal journey.
Not that I think I’m unusual in being a career-minded thirtysomething woman waiting for her biological clock to start ticking in earnest.
Women are delaying motherhood more than ever – statistics show there are now more births to the over-40s than to the under-20s.
I have always been driven by my career. When I took a job in television, presenting Songs Of Praise, it was a massive shift from the West End leading lady’s career I had carved as Maria in The Sound Of Music, aged 23.
I now work for television production company Wildflame Productions, developing ideas for programmes and, six years on, time has flown.
Somehow I forgot that age was a crucial factor in starting a family. My husband is similarly relaxed about if and when we take that next step.
Connie is shown sobbing in the documentary as she recalls the loss of her twin brother at birth
Honestly? I’ve just never been sure motherhood is for me. I didn’t grow up around children; I’ve never changed a nappy. What scares me most is the sacrifice I’d have to make: the loss of my much-treasured independence, mainly, and also the potential pause in my career.
Of course, this was all academic – first I had to find out whether having children was even physically possible.
For the documentary, I visited the Cardiff branch of the London Women’s Clinic where I had various blood tests and ultrasound scans.
Happily, they concluded I was a healthy, average 34-year-old with a ‘fluffy’ womb (I’m told that’s a good thing) and that there appeared to be no obvious barriers to conception.
All very reassuring. But it was when the consultant Dr Hemlata Thackare laid bare the statistics on fertility that I was really taken by surprise.
At 34, a woman like me has a 40 per cent chance of conceiving in any given cycle. In just four years’ time, that chance will be slashed dramatically to just 20 per cent. Egg quality begins to deteriorate by 30, and declines rapidly by the age of 42.
I left the clinic faced with the realisation that if I sit on the fence for much longer, hoping one day I’ll feel a massive urge to be a mother, that choice may be taken out of my hands – particularly if I suddenly want my very own Von Trapp family. There it was, in black and white.
Connie, pictured backstage in 2007 when she was starring as Maria in The Sound of Music, says she and her husband are relaxed about if and when they take the next step of having a child
But the reality of actually having a child is, as all parents will know, so far removed from the idea.
I visited a nursery, full of bouncing bundles, feeling like an alien visiting from another planet. Holding one nine-month-old baby made me cry in a way I can’t fully explain. Was this broodiness?
I cried again holding a five- day-old newborn in a birthing hut in rural Pembrokeshire. Here, Samara Hawthorn, a ‘holistic doula’, supports women who want an all-natural birth in the wild.
It was an extraordinary, magical place and it made me feel like childbirth is the most natural thing in the world.
Samara offered to perform shiatsu massage on my belly, an ancient Japanese art which claims to improve fertility and channel internal energies.
I was sceptical, but afterwards Samara said something prescient: she advised me my womb was ‘a bit sad’. I laughed it off, joking my stomach must have been rumbling. But later, I realised this throwaway comment could actually be a significant piece of the puzzle.
Was I sad about not having children? Samara had made me consider that my deliberation was nonsensical. My chance to explore the true reasons for my indecision came after meeting Andrea Yearsley, a 51-year-old mum of two who uses hypnotherapy primarily to help women who are trying to conceive.
But in my case, she thought a session could help me find the source of my procrastination.
I didn’t think I was suggestible enough to be hypnotised, let alone that it might yield anything.
She asked me to roll my eyes back so they started to flutter, which encourages a deeply relaxed state of rapid eye movement, and gently talked to me as if we were walking down a flight of marble steps into a beautiful garden.
It felt relaxing and warm. Andrea told me to imagine one hand was holding a helium balloon while in my left was a concrete bucket. To my surprise, I found I couldn’t lift the arm holding the bucket and the helium balloon felt like it was tugging my hand towards the ceiling.
The former presenter (pictured, left, with Lesley Garrett, right, in The Sound of Music) says hypnosis affected her physically, leaving her unable to lift one of her arms while the other felt as though it was drifting toward the ceiling
I could hear Andrea suggesting I think about my childhood and then she tapped me on the forehead and asked me to think about a specific time which was connected to my procrastination over motherhood.
It startled me, but instantly this image of myself aged two, with my favourite toy tiger, came into my mind. It was astonishing – I had never expected hypnosis to feel so colourful, so vivid or so real.
She asked me to tell her what I saw. I said: ‘Loads of toys, but I have no one else to play with.’
I was crying a river of tears. Whether they were happy or sad, I had no idea, but emotions were washing over me, and my false eyelashes drifting down my face.
The second scene was even more powerful. I walked into my grandmother’s house and I remember the Scrabble board set out on the table, and the way the table felt under my fingers. I could feel the sun coming through the window, the temperature in the room.
‘What’s the source of your indecision about being a mum?’ Andrea asked gently. ‘I was ten,’ I replied, and smiled for the first time. ‘I’m playing Scrabble. I played a great word, and someone said Justin would be proud. I knew who Justin was. They didn’t need to tell me. I just knew. They had lost him – but they still have me, and I want to make them happy.’
It was a moment of emotional exhaustion, and one which Andrea must have sensed because she brought me out of the trance.
Her analysis, as she laid it out, made a lot of sense. As we talked we concluded that subconsciously I was scared of losing my own child, just as my parents had lost Justin.
The singer, pictured performing at a memorial pop concert dedicated to Princess Diana in 2007, concluded she was scared of losing her own child because her parents had lost Justin
Could my indecision be linked to grief? I had to take the rest of the day off – I had to come to terms with what had just happened – so I went to see my mum. It might seem strange, but we hadn’t discussed Justin since that day when I was ten. It was difficult for my parents and I understood that.
Our conversation, though, was so inspiring. Mum was so balanced about it, so eloquent. She told me she’d known the moment she came round from the general anaesthetic that Justin had passed away.
But crucially, she was realistic about my own future, and said the words every daughter needs to hear. ‘Don’t be afraid of having a family, and don’t be afraid not to. You must do what’s right for you.’
She is, as ever, right. The choice to have a baby or not is a privilege. More than ever I appreciate what a special gift it is, especially having been reminded of Mum’s loss.
So having seen the joys of motherhood, thanks to the amazing women who shared their stories, I’m determined that my internal fear should stay internal. I now know the joy of a child outweighs the fear by far.
- Baby Love with Connie Fisher is available on BBC iPlayer.
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