Lisa Faulkner has bravely spoken on how she felt in the weeks prior to adopting her daughter Billie.
In 2008, the actress, 48, adopted Billie, now 14, with her first husband Chris Coghill.
Lisa has always been open about her fertility struggles after suffering from an ectopic pregnancy, that led to her having surgery to have one of her fallopian tubes removed.
The cooking whizz had three failed rounds of IVF before she and ex Chris decided to adopt.
Writing for Pause, she penned: “I knew I still wanted to be a mother even more than ever. We looked at every option under the sun including surrogacy and adoption abroad before we decided to adopt from the UK.”
Lisa added that she and Chris only had six weeks to prepare for Billie to move in with them as within a matter of weeks they were: “matched.”
The frantic race to prepare the home led to her feeling “excited and scared” but she was adds being an adopter is the “most incredible feeling.”
Lisa – who is now married to TV chef John Torode – explained: “The excitement of being approved as an adopter and knowing we had been matched with a child was the most incredible feeling.
“I had all the same feelings as when I found out I was pregnant. I was over the moon and so very scared all at the same time! Within six weeks of being matched with our daughter she would be coming to live with us so it was all very last minute, painting her bedroom and getting everything ready for her, but they were such exciting days.”
In her deeply personal memoir Meant To Be Lisa discussed how Clomid, a drug she took for just a few months relatively early in her fertility journey, continues to affect her today.
“Clomid is very interesting,” Lisa told, who co-presents John and Lisa’s Weekend Kitchen alongside her husband John.
“It works for loads of people but it made me mental” she added.
The drug is used by women who do not ovulate regularly and stimulates eggs to develop so they can be released by the ovaries.
“Within three days of taking it I turned into a different person,” she explained.
“One minute I was crying – literally sobbing – on the bathroom floor, then I was high as a kite, then I was angry.
“It felt like the worst PMT, but with no period pain because you take it at the start of the cycle. It was horrific, with no end in sight even though you only take it for a few days at a time.”
Lisa doesn’t feel that doctors warned her properly that there might have been these side-effects: “I had no idea that this tiny, tiny pill was going to affect me like that.