My kids were frozen for 17 years

After an agonising struggle to conceive, Sally and Andrew Woods defied the odds.

Sally Woods kissed her husband goodbye and hugged him tightly. Taking a deep breath, she watched as he climbed into the family car, clutching a flask. In just a few hours, the container would be full of hope.

Andrew, 40, was embarking on a six-hour round trip to pick up a sperm sample he had frozen 17 years earlier. By this time, the sample was one of the oldest in storage. As she waved Andrew off, Sally hoped it was capable of fulfilling their family dream.

Just two weeks before meeting Sally in a pub 17 years ago, Andrew, then 23, found out he had testicular cancer. Instead of enjoying dinner dates and movies, Sally and Andrew spent the first few weeks of their romance making huge decisions about their future.

“We knew Andrew’s rounds of chemotherapy would make him infertile,” Sally explains. “It was weird thinking about children so soon, but even then we knew we wanted to be together.”