I know first-hand why critics of UK's first womb transplant baby are wrong

Then the follow-ups questioning the cost of the groundbreaking treatment. I know that's just how the news cycle works, but it still broke my heart for all those families for whom a moment of real hope was dismissed so cruelly.

I know both feelings. The deep pain and sense of inadequacy. The overwhelming feeling of being cheated out of something that others can take for granted when you are told you’re unlikely to have a child is almost impossible to articulate.

Birth of Louise Brown

But the joy when medical science delivers a solution, when you hear that longed-for child cry as it is placed in your arms, is beyond words. More importantly it is beyond any monetary valuation.

I was just a teenager when a similar media storm broke over the birth of Louise Brown, the world’s first so-called test-tube baby. That slightly dismissive, inaccurate term was coined to explain her conception through in vitro fertilisation pioneered by Robert Edwards, Patrick Steptoe and Jean Purdy.

I had no idea that more than a decade later her birth would give my husband and I hope as we embarked on our own, often traumatic, journey to parenthood. I appreciate it’s not the route everyone chooses. It was not a decision we took lightly.

More than once treatments failed, and we eventually turned to a new technique only offered by a handful of private clinics in London. Fewer than half a dozen people, mostly medical professionals, knew our circumstances as my lifelong, over-riding desire for privacy conflicted with the need for emotional support.

Happy families

I do not often think about it now. Life as parents for Calum and I was much the same as any other family, underlined by a constant awareness of how fortunate we were.

That was the emotion which swept over me again this week as I observed the remarkable story of the new family born of the latest breakthroughs in medical science.

Their pioneering surgeon Isobel Quiroga has continually stressed that this particular treatment will not be for everyone and comes with risks. And of course those costs which attracted so much criticism.

I am sure there were those who expressed the same doubts 46 years ago about IVF. Just as I am equally sure that there are thousands of happy families up and down this country today who would not exist but for that breakthrough, and developments which followed.

People in the workforce, contributing to our economy, or creative minds and medical scientists driving forward progress whose parents can relate to this new family and their joy.

In just over a month, we will celebrate my daughter’s birthday. It's not a ‘big birthday' and, while I will of course have a moment when I thank whichever God or medical scientist made it possible, we will mark it like every other family.

Which is all we ever wanted, and what I wish for all those for whom this past week brought renewed hope.

Christine Jardine is Liberal Democrat MP for Edinburgh West