'Home and Away' Emily Symons "at peace" with not having kids

Home and Away star Emily Symons has confessed that she has come to terms with not having children.

The actress, who plays Marilyn Chambers in the Australian soap, split from second husband Lorenzo Smith in 2005 after two unsuccessful IVF attempts.

However, losing her mum to breast cancer in May 2010 helped her to gain a new perspective on the situation, Symons told the Herald Sun.

"I spent a lot of my 30s being so anguished about not having a baby," she said. "Then you realise life is really too short. When you spend a lot of time on a cancer ward, it makes the baby thing seem irrelevant. There's a longing and a biological need to have a baby that I don't think men have.

"But the flip side is that IVF can take over your life. It gets to the point where you're so desperate to have a baby, everything else falls by the wayside. There was a phase when I thought, if I had a baby, my mum might stay alive longer. It was crazy; your hormones [go mad]. But I'm at peace with that now. I understand it wasn't meant for me."

Symons spent eight years in Emmerdale before returning to Australia in 2009 to look after her mother, and subsequently reprised her role as Marilyn in Summer Bay.

"Suddenly I left my job and my friends," she said of leaving the UK. "Overnight, I was standing in Sydney. Of course, it's my home, but I hadn't lived here for 10 years. There's an adjustment period. You have to reconnect with your family and your old friends. I felt like a fish out of water."

She also thanked her Home and Away colleagues, such as Ray Meagher (Alf Stewart), for supporting her following her mum's death.