The most difficult journey of my life

Everything was textbook and having already been through one pregnancy, I hadn't had any worries this time round.

Our 12 week scan came round and we got to meet our beautiful little girl, who looked like she was having a whale of a time, she was so active and I remember thinking what a little monkey she was going to be. It was love at first sight,

I went home on cloud 9 that day and felt so blessed. We booked ourselves in for a 16 week scan, hoping to find out the sex, and to our horror, the sonographer told us that she wasn't happy with what she was seeing.

Time stood still, and my husband burst into tears.

We were told that the sonographer was unsure of what it was that she was seeing, but our baby seemed to have a large cyst instead of kidneys, and one of her legs had not developed properly. We were referred for an emergency appointment with a specialist in London the next morning, where all our fears turned into reality.

Our beautiful little girl had a rare disease called Caudal Regression Syndrome, her spine, legs, kidneys and bladder had not developed properly, and although she would most likely carry to term, she had a 0.1% chance of survival after birth. We had to make the heart breaking decision to induce labour.

A week later, after a 7 hour labour, my precious little girl was born.

She was beautiful in every way, and I have photos and a memory box of items to remember her by. We were told this was a late miscarriage, but those words somehow never felt like they captured the gravity of our loss. This was by far the most terrible part of my life, the pain was tremendous for a long time afterwards, and our marriage was put under inmense strain too.

I swore I would never go on to have more children as I could have never willingly open up my life to the possibility of that much pain again, but a year on we had a total accident, and he is now 9 months old and perfect.

The pregnancy was hugely stressful, but I couldn't be happier that Izzy sent me this beautiful gift.

I will always have 3 children, 2 here with me, and one beautiful angel tucked away forever in my heart. Xxx