The act will have been brief, impersonal and utterly bereft of emotion - but 25 years on, the moment that Caroline Halstead was conceived is causing her lasting heartache.
For she was fathered by an anonymous sperm donor and, like a growing number conceived in this way, she has struggled to come to terms with the fact that she is the product of a scientific process rather than a loving union.
'I was conceived in a petri dish by artificial insemination at a Harley Street Clinic in London,' she says, describing the fertility treatment her mother sought when her husband was diagnosed as infertile.
'In my view, it is a horrible, clinical way to be conceived. All my life I've felt as if I'm only half a person.'
A Surrey housewife and mother who is expecting her second child in August, Caroline is haunted by the thought of her conception - and the fact that, unlike her children, she will never know or even meet her biological father.
Her feelings are far from isolated. A new study, the first of its kind into the effects of donor conception on offspring, reveals the complex and often troubling emotions adults born in this way can experience. They feel confusion, isolation and hurt, more acutely, even, than those who have been adopted.
Nearly half of those surveyed by the Commission on Parenthood's Future were disturbed that money was involved in their conception.
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