THE moment Charmaine Northcote was told she would never have her own children is branded on her memory forever.

Charmaine, from Swindon, was then just 23 and recovering from an operation to remove cysts from her ovaries when a doctor gave her the bad news.

“He looked at me and said I couldn’t have kids, and if I did get pregnant, it was likely to be an ectopic pregnancy and would kill me,” she said.

“I wanted kids desperately. I just wanted to be a mum and being told I was not ever going to be able to have children, with not even a chance to ask questions, was terrible.”

Now 41, the celebration cake-maker has been blessed with a beautiful daughter called Willow, aged three – but the long journey from that dark moment to the birth of her miracle child was beset with difficulty and trauma.

One of the hardest times was just after Charmaine had received the news about her poor chances of ever being a mum. She thought the announcement was made insensitively and it left her totally stunned. She could hardly believe what the doctor had said.

“I just sat there. I did not know what to do or what was happening. Strangely I thought it was a joke.

"Within minutes, a nurse said a couple of people had come to see me, one being an ex boyfriend.

“I remember bursting into tears – and he was not someone I wanted to see after getting that news. I lay there crying and didn’t know what to do with myself.”

Charmaine was working in security at the time, at nightclubs in Swindon such as the Brunel Rooms and Destiny and Desire.

A member of the famous family of showmen who ran the R. Edwards and Sons fairground, Charmaine grew up in the fairground world, travelling around the country and even spending three months in Singapore.

Aged 21, she changed track and started working in security. It was at this time she was diagnosed with gallstones and an operation to sort out her condition was followed by complications and further operations.

“I had pipes coming out of me for six months,” she recalled.

“I was in hospital for three months – the last two in the John Radcliffe in Oxford.”

Although her later ovarian cysts were not part of the same condition, her previous surgeries made the later operation more difficult.

The bad news about her fertility had a profound effect on Charmaine.

“I felt I wasn’t worth anything. I stopped caring about myself. As far as I was concerned, I couldn’t have kids. When I was a bouncer, I behaved as though nothing mattered anymore. I went into situations I never would have done if I had more of a sense of the value of my life.

“I was thrown down stairs, I was punched.

"I thought no-one could take anything worse from me than what had already been done.”

But a change was on the horizon.

Even through Charmaine knew nothing about it, she had been noticed.

While working at Destiny and Desire, she had caught the eye of a young special police constable called James. Charmaine had imagined the worst as far as dating went:

“I always worried about telling someone. I thought, no-one’s going to want me if they want to have kids.”

It took some time for James to pluck up the courage to talk to Charmaine, and she didn’t actually meet him till she changed jobs and started working at the Orbital Retail Park.

A mutual friend finally arranged for them to be introduced.

“We started meeting up and chatting, and got on really well,” she smiled.

A year later, on May 22 2010, they married. Despite the doctor’s warning, and knowing she was risking her life, Charmaine wanted to try and get pregnant.

“I wanted to give it a try, I desperately wanted a child, and I thought it was worth the risk. James wasn’t so sure,” she said.

But three years later, nothing had happened.

They made some investigations into IVF treatment, and took the first steps towards adoption, but neither option worked out for the couple.

“It was breaking me, and making him so much more miserable and depressed,” Charmaine said. “By then we had given up. I realised I was never going to be a mum. I carried on doing security and making cakes but then we decided I would give up the security job and focus on the cakes.”

She had made and decorated the cake for her own wedding, then started making them for friends. Gradually demand built up and she set up a business called That’s the Cherry on Top, the name of which she changed to Bake Me Elegant three and a half years ago, when she changed her focus from celebration to wedding cakes. Charmaine makes both sponge and fruit cakes and uses a whole raft of decorating skills to craft life-like roses and other beautiful blooms from sugar paste.

Just a few weeks before leaving her security job, Charmaine started to feel strangely tired.

“On April 9th, I took a pregnancy test, and it was positive,” she said. “That was one of the happiest days of my life.”

The pregnancy had its challenges. At one point early on, blood test results suggested she was going to miscarry.

“James had to practically carry me out of the doctor’s. I couldn’t walk properly,” she said. “I slipped down the wall and sat on the steps and cried. I had got so close and now it was being taken away.”

Fortunately, the pregnancy turned out to be secure, and whole Charmaine suffered from pelvis dislocation and carrying a baby turned out to be sometimes painful because of earlier operations, the pregnancy went to term and she had an elective Caesarean section.

Finally, Charmaine’s dream had come true.

“It was absolutely wonderful!” she remembered.

The proud parents called their new baby girl Willow – after the character in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series.

“Willow was someone who was shy but became a strong and powerful woman,” Charmaine said.

The new parents had another worrying moment when Willow caught jaundice needed treatment in the hospital, but after nine days they could take their daughter home. Life has never been the same since – for which James and Charmaine are eternally grateful.

And it turns out Willow is a strong character just like her mum:

“You know those pictures where you see nine girls dressed as ballerinas and one dressed as Batman? She’d be the one dressed as Batman,” Charmaine said.

The path to parenthood has been a rocky one for James and Charmaine, but despite the odds against them, they succeeded.

“It is definitely a joy,” Charmaine said. “I wouldn’t change any of it for the world. James loves being a dad, and Willow’s grandparents are so proud of her. They spoil her rotten.”