"Pregnant with my now 8-year-old son, the thought of miscarriage barely entered my head, and apart from an aversion to coffee, I sailed through. When we finally decided to try for another baby, I was delighted to fall pregnant very quickly. This time I could still enjoy a morning cup of coffee. This didn't bother me; I'd been told that every pregnancy was different. The slight brown spotting from week 6 did, but my doctor reassured me that brown discharge was merely old blood that had lost its haemoglobin; and was nothing to worry about. This was just over thirteen weeks; the classic watershed. After my first antenatal appointment my pregnancy was official. I remember bouncing out of the hospital and phoning my friends, babbling the great news.

The next day, while watching 'Carry on Doctor' of all things, I felt a few fluttering cramps. Two minutes later, my waters broke, followed immediately by a catastrophic rush of bright red blood. Belting upstairs to the bathroom, I screamed for my husband who, white with shock himself, sat and held my hand as my insides, or so it felt, spilled out. Every few minutes I would glance down, numbly, and he would say 'Don't look' and quickly flush the toilet. He kept asking whether we should go to hospital, partly, I think, because he wanted to feel he was doing something, but the idea of leaking in casualty was appalling. Deep down I knew there was nothing to be done.

Next day we went to the Early Pregnancy Unit where I endured a long long silence while a nurse carried out an ultrasound. As I stared at the strategically placed tissues on the windowsill, she murmured: 'I'm so sorry'. They decided not to carry out a D&C because there were 'no products of conception left'. Overnight my body had gone from being a tender incubator to a briskly efficient disposal unit. I'd had what they call 'an inevitable miscarriage'. But that was all they could tell me. From a long way away I heard phrases like 'just one of those things' and 'very common'. My husband asked sensible questions, and fiddled with leaflets while I gazed at the empty ultrasound screen.

Ironically, I'd read that emotional recovery from miscarriage often took longer than the physical side. It was the other way round for me, because all my family and friends were immensely supportive. Nobody said anything crass and my feelings were taken seriously. Yet, despite reassurance that the bleeding would tail off after a couple of weeks, I was still bleeding solidly six weeks later. (There was no infection or fever, I just bled) Eventually, I went to my doctor who prescribed a week's supply of norethisterone (artificial progesterone) to kick-start my system. Three months later my cycle is still haywire.

I feel that we live in a culture where we're expected to take control of our own health. And this can so easily slip into self blame when things go wrong. If pregnancy is a time where we're not in control of what's going on inside us, no matter how healthy our lifestyle, a miscarriage is the most brutal reminder. I wonder if the fact I could still drink coffee, or the brown spotting was an early warning. We are trying again, and I know my next pregnancy will be fraught with trepidation. But at least I've now accepted that my body didn't let me down, it was just dealing with a problem in the best way it could. "

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