EMBRYOLOGIST Paul Fielding wept in the witness box as he told a jury how his wife's miscarriage sent his spirits crashing - even though such events were part of his everyday work in in-vitro fertilisation.

He told Southampton Crown Court: "Miscarriage is a normal part of IVF work, unfortunately, and I deal with it professionally. But on a personal note, I could not deal with it."

The 44-year-old is accused of defrauding and assaulting women undergoing fertility treatment at the Hampshire Clinic in Basingstoke.

He is alleged to have left eight women's embryos frozen in a storage vessel instead of thawing them so they could be transferred by a doctor into the women's wombs. Each time, it is alleged he pocketed a £50 fee and allowed the women to undergo the procedure needlessly.

Fielding told the court his marriage became increasingly difficult after the miscarriage in 1999. He said he became more depressed, eventually telephoning the Samaritans and obtaining psychiatric help.

He had earlier told the court he owed £25,000 in loans and was seeking to remortgage his then home in Station Road, Whit-church. He said his wife did not want to discuss money at all.

In response to questions from his counsel, Miss Susan Edwards QC, about the embryo transfers, Fielding denied he had been dishonest. He said: "I believed the embryos transferred were theirs." But he admitted it was "a possibility" that he may have unknowingly thawed the wrong embryos.

He also agreed he could, in the first place, have frozen more embyros than were recorded because what appeared to be unfertilised eggs subsequently fertilised.

Another theory he put forward was that more eggs than were recorded were removed by a surgeon prior to fertilisation because some had stuck together.

Miss Edwards said the fact he did not keep proper records of all this was a "major and serious error" - and Fielding agreed with that. He said: "I'm appalled at the standard of record-keeping in retrospect."

Fielding said another difficulty he faced was that the liquid nitrogen-cooled storage vessel was full and it was difficult to fit all the embryo storage equipment in it.

Fielding also told the court that he had been fed-up with very long hours and regular weekend work and claimed his boss, the gynaecologist Mr Robert Bates, had become more distant once he was made medical director of Basingstoke hospital.

Fielding has denied eight counts of false accounting and three of assault occasioning actual bodily harm relating to the period 1997 to 1999.

He has been charged with assault because it is alleged three women suffered pain while undergoing an embyro transfer procedure which they only consented to in the belief they might become pregnant.

The case continues.