Popular ABC TV presenter Virginia Trioli has shared the story of her failed IVF attempt after she was caught in an embarrassing on-air gaffe appearing to mock Nationals senator Barnaby Joyce in 2009.

Ms Trioli was presenting ABC News Breakfast, when an interview with the senator cut back to the presenter, and she was caught pulling a face and twirling her finger near her head, in a move that appeared to suggest she thought he was crazy.

Speaking at a Women in Media conference on the Gold Coast today, Ms Trioli said she was finally willing to share what led to the on-air blunder, and the personal toll it took in the days that followed.

This is an excerpt of her speech titled "Being a difficult woman in a difficult world":

'I think my heart stopped'

That morning — I was jubilant.

I was high as a kite. I remember now the exuberance and hilarity with which I strode through the door of the office at 4:00am.

I'd just returned from a week's leave during which I underwent what felt like my 100th IVF procedure and 85th embryo transfer — at least that's how the numbers felt to me.

We finally had an embryo that looked like it stood a chance. It was transferred and I returned to work, technically pregnant and over the moon.

As is the way of these things — and particularly with women on TV — of course no-one knew a thing about it. I'd made sure of that.

The high jinks in the studio that day, all generated by me, were funny, silly. And incredibly risky.

You just don't play up like that in a live studio. Let me tell you now.

When we replayed an interview with the then-senator Joyce that I'd done earlier that morning — an interview characterised by tortured language and some confusing concepts from him — I twirled my finger by my head for the amusement of no-one in particular.

The camera cut back to me earlier than expected and I was caught.

I think my heart stopped dead for a full five seconds.

And a part of me will never recover from the horror and shock of what I'd done.

I stumbled through the rest of the broadcast in a daze.

Once off air I spoke to my EP, and then I rang Senator Joyce to apologise.

Sorry, this video has expired Virginia Trioli makes 'crazy' gesture at Barnaby Joyce's comments

He had not seen the incident and dismissed it lightly — graciously accepting my apology.

Later in the day he even joked to the media about how maybe he was a bit crazy.

But by then the story was off and running.

The oceans of social media outrage were boiling, and the waves of abuse were pounding me.

I turned off all social media and spent the rest of the morning in frantic discussions with the head of news and current affairs and the MD of the ABC.

We knew how this looked. An ABC presenter sending up a Coalition member at a time when the broadcaster was under sustained attack for perceived bias.

It was dreadful.

After hours of this I finally made it home.

I remember walking in the front door. My husband was there, working from home.

My bag slid from my shoulder and I stood in the middle of a room that seemed to have telescoped out to leave me alone and small at the centre of a vast and empty space — and I told my husband that I thought I'd just killed a 20 year career in journalism.

And I cried.

Two days later I began to bleed.

Now — it is of course highly probable that this tiny precious embryo was never going to take — so many of them don't.

But to this day — and for all time — I will always believe that it was my own silliness, and all the drama that followed, that stole away one more hope for a child.

Let me pause here and emphasise one thing — the most important thing of all.

Barnaby Joyce may have been the one who copped it from me that morning but it could have been anyone that day.

It was certainly going to be someone.

For anyone who thought or still thinks that was a moment of left/right ridicule let me set you straight.

If you think that, then you can know nothing of the abysmal lows and the ecstatic highs that make up the IVF rollercoaster and the emotions that go with it.

It was foolish. It was unprofessional. But it was not bias.