People always ask me if a reason was ever given for my losing two babies. After losing Kathryn, the possibility of a weak (incompetent) cervix was mentioned. We were given the option of having a cervical suture (stitch) in the next pregnancy. We were also informed of the risk of miscarriage arising from the stitch. Unless I were to lose a second baby in a similar manner, we wouldn't really be sure that was the problem. We decided that we really didn't want to risk causing a miscarriage by having a stitch, which may or may not have been needed. After losing David, we were more certain of the problem. During my third and fourth pregnancies, I had a stitch inserted at around 14 weeks. The resulting children are having naps at the time of writing this!

I remember feeling a sort of unspoken expectation that I wouldn't be able to cope with seeing babies. The day after Kathryn's birth/death, I remember calling at the house of some close friends (the ones I mention in Kathryn's story, who'd had a baby a month before). Apart from wanting to see them and tell them what had happened, I wanted to somehow demonstrate that I understood that the lives of other babies were in no way related to the death of the baby I had lost. It really wasn't that difficult for me. I just decided to be happy for those whose babies lived.

I later heard that another friend had a baby on the same day I had Kathryn. I was really happy that something so wonderful had come out of such a bad day. I might not say it, but I think of little Christine often and am glad for her life.

I remember feeling nervous about how other people would react to me. Would they avoid me because of not knowing what to say? Would they treat me differently from usual? I was quite amazed at the level of support I felt from friends, who just allowed me to be myself: to cry or laugh with no awkwardness. And there were those many, many women who said, right out of the blue, 'it happened to me too'.

Don't underestimate the comradeship found on the internet. One time in desperation, I typed 'miscarriage' into a search engine. The site I stumbled upon belonged to a girl I could identify with and who encouraged me more than she will probably ever know. We still have occasional contact now, five years on. Her site is gone, at least temporarily, but if it returns I'll be sure to link to it. Look out for it - she calls it 'sunflowergal'.

For me, the hardest things to deal with weren't the physical and emotional things at all. The God stuff was much harder to work through. This is such a big part of my dealing with my losses that I have written about it in more detail on other pages. The physical and emotional stuff was simple in comparison with the years it took me to sort out the 'God bits'. On the whole my being a Christian helped when I lost Kathryn (as you can read if you click here), but was a big problem when I lost David (click here to read about that). Do feel free to e-mail me if you want to talk further about any of this stuff.

'It was obviously not meant to be...' is a fairly standard line for well-meaning people who really don't know what to say. Fortunately not many people tried that one on me. My heated response tends to be that if it wasn't meant to be, it wouldn't have been - not even for 21 weeks.