The test I held seemed surreal. Two distinct lines confirmed, without doubt, that I was pregnant. Becoming a mother was a dream I’d had since childhood, but I wondered if this could truly be happening.

At 41, I’d been told for years that due to health complications, conceiving independently would be nearly impossible without medical intervention. The injections I was administering weren’t for fertility treatment, either.

For 18 months, I’d been using Mounjaro, aiming to reduce my weight before starting IVF. Now, as I see the sunlight highlight my ten-month-old’s golden locks, rock him gently to sleep, or hear him call for his ‘Papa’, my heart overflows with joy.

I believe Mounjaro has given me not only my health, but my miracle little boy.

I’ve battled obesity since I was just eight years old. Now at 42, my earliest memories involve body dissatisfaction and deep self-consciousness.

In my teenage years, when my menstrual cycles began, I suspected something was amiss. My cycles stretched to 90 days instead of the typical 28, I developed excess facial hair, a struggle as a teenager, while my weight escalated.

One day, flipping through a magazine, I stumbled upon an article on polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and realized I exhibited the same symptoms. During the 1990s, PCOS wasn’t well-known, and at 15, I was prescribed the contraceptive pill—the standard treatment back then to manage symptoms by stabilizing hormones.

I was happy to have a name for my illness, but it’s a vicious cycle. PCOS makes you resistant to insulin, which in turn increases your appetite, making it easier to gain weight.

Yet obesity itself dysregulates your insulin further and exacerbates existing PCOS symptoms. I felt trapped in the prison created by my own body.

One part of my diagnosis in particular broke my heart. The literature told me in no uncertain terms that a diagnosis of PCOS meant I was almost guaranteed to have fertility issues, meaning my dream of becoming a mum might never happen.

It’s a double whammy: not only do the hormonal imbalances of the condition make conception more difficult, but the weight gain makes the prospect even more remote. Of course it worried me. But I’ve always been a glass half full person. Sure, it might be harder for me to get pregnant, but there were ways around it, right?

You certainly can’t accuse me of not doing my best to lose weight. Over the years I tried everything.

Name a fad diet and I’ve probably done it: Atkins, WeightWatchers, calorie-tracking… While most girls my age dreamed about Justin Timberlake or Leonardo DiCaprio, I was dreaming of bariatric surgery.

I’ve lost more than 5 st on three occasions but, thanks to PCOS, it has always piled straight back on. And while my weight issues might have been linked to a medical condition, it didn’t insulate me from the judgment of others. Society doesn’t make it easy to be overweight. We’re made to feel lazy, like we just haven’t tried enough or don’t care about being healthy. It makes an already difficult situation nearly impossible.

Thankfully, my husband Brad, who I met when I was 20, has always been supportive and loved me at every weight I’ve been. He’s also struggled with obesity and has type 1 diabetes. He always wanted to be a dad, but never put pressure on me.

By the time I reached my late 30s, though, I was getting desperate and the sound of my biological clock as I approached 40 was deafening. But having come off the contraceptive Pill a few years previously to try for a baby, all it had done was make my weight skyrocket.

Aged 39, I was at my heaviest – 23 st – and no closer to reaching a healthy weight, let alone conceiving.

I was starting to feel like a failure as a woman and as a wife. My body couldn’t do the one thing it was designed to – and all the while I was filled with self-loathing when I looked in a mirror.

The trigger point came when I had a serious health scare. One day in 2021, my body started retaining fluid, and I experienced rapid weight gain, as well as breathlessness and a racing heartbeat. My doctor sent me to a cardiologist, who feared I had congestive heart failure.

The tests came back clear – water retention can be a side-effect of PCOS, I later discovered – but as I lay in the cardiologist’s office, my joints ached, I had trouble breathing…and I was scared.

It was the lowest point in my life. I couldn’t go on like this – I had to lose weight, for my health if not my fertility.

A year earlier, I’d read about weight-loss jab Wegovy in an article online. I went to my doctor at the time, and we tried to get me approved for Wegovy, Ozempic, Saxenda – all of which were denied.

In America, where I live, if your insurance won’t cover it, Wegovy is upwards of £1,000 per month, which was out of my reach. I forgot about it, resigning myself to dieting again. I lost 4 st, but quickly regained 3 st of that.

After my health scare, I was scrolling on social media and heard a doctor talking about Mounjaro. I looked into it, and it was much more affordable.

I was concerned the weight loss would be slow, and that by the time I was a healthy weight I’d be too old to get pregnant.

But there was no way I could conceive in my current physical state. For my own health I needed to take control of my weight and give it a go. I admit I was embarrassed. Was I really going to take an injection because I just couldn’t lose weight? I felt pathetic.

But two weeks after that first jab in July 2022, everything changed. At last, the food noise stopped. So much space in my brain had been taken up by food, that now for the first time in years I felt creative, able to plough energy and resources into both my interior design business and my burgeoning career as a content creator.

I lost 10 lb in the first month, and after that I was averaging a steady loss of 1-2 lb per week, and took care to continue eating a modest but sufficient 1,500 to 1,800 calories per day.

Within two months, my menstrual cycle went from its usual 90 days down to 30 – regular for the first time in my life.

I reached my goal weight of 11 st in January 2024 – having lost 12 st since I started injecting – and had lowered my dose from 12.5 mg to 10 mg, with the aim of slowly reducing it as much as possible.

In the time I’d been taking Mounjaro, my husband and I had stopped trying for a baby, although I still wasn’t taking the Pill. Doctors don’t recommend that you conceive while taking Mounjaro, as there’s little research on its effects on unborn babies.

But by this point, especially as I was over 40, I assumed there was no chance it could happen for me, without fertility treatment anyway. So we hadn’t abstained completely. There was Valentine’s Day, and my birthday not long after…you get the picture.

When my period didn’t come as normal in February 2024 – having been regular for more than a year at this stage – I was in denial. Surely, with my history of chronic PCOS, I couldn’t be pregnant?

I put off taking a pregnancy test. As so many women struggling with infertility will tell you, you get tired of the heartbreak of repeated negative results.

But encouraged by one of my friends, I finally took the plunge, and I can’t put into words how happy I felt when those two lines appeared on the stick. Brad’s reaction – of joy, emotion and, primarily, surprise – was priceless.

Many people, when they find out they’re expecting, keep the news secret until the 12-week mark, when the risk of miscarriage reduces dramatically, but I told friends and family immediately and announced it on social media within a week. As soon as I knew I was pregnant, I stopped injecting Mounjaro, but my baby had been conceived while the medication was in my system – and I’d even injected once, unknowingly, with him in my womb.

Doctors told me they wouldn’t know if there had been any impact until after he was born.

But even though I was happy to stay off the injections for the sake of my baby, the prospect of not being on Mounjaro for the next nine months terrified me.

I ended up gaining more than 8 st while pregnant but I got through knowing Mounjaro was waiting for me at the other end.

And someone else was waiting for me, too. In November last year, little Everett came into the world – healthy, happy and the answer to his parents’ prayers.

Holding my baby boy in my arms was overwhelming. Out of love for him, yes, but also with pride for myself. I’d made a radical choice to take control of my life, and here was the beautiful little result looking back at me.

There were no guarantees this medication would help me become a mum, but I had to take that chance for the sake of my health – and it had paid off.

Not only did I have a beautiful baby, but I was still slimmer than I’d been for most of my life.

I started weaning Everett at five months then went back on the jabs. I’m working my way back to my ‘maintenance’ weight of 12 st, injecting a 10 mg dose.

I’m still breastfeeding, but a lactation consultant assured me Everett was gaining weight well, and some independent studies have shown that the GLP-1 particle is too large to pass through breast milk. We do weekly weighted feeds to ensure he is staying healthy.

Becoming parents in our 40s has changed our lives. We’re grateful for every day that passes.

Today, you couldn’t find a happier, sweeter little boy than Everett, who’s meeting every milestone. Crucially, he’s shown me what I’m capable of. What my body’s capable of. I took control of my health and I got a healthy baby boy. And that is the greatest gift of all.

• Follow Rachael on TikTok @mylittlelovenest