iVillagers coping with miscarriage

Emily's story
'I'm an 18-year-old student and am living with my fiance to whom I have been engaged for just over a year. We hadn't planned the pregnancy but we have both always wanted to have kids. When we found out, we were scared but happy.

My parents don't get on with my fiance, so they were not supportive of the pregnancy. It was while I was staying with them that I miscarried. It was quite bad and I was taken to hospital, where I later had a D&C. I'd lost the baby two days before the three months stage.

I returned to university a few days later, finding it too hard being at home, and spent the next week or so having to tell all my friends what had happened. That was one of the hardest things about it all. A couple were understanding but most of them didn't know what to say, or just said the wrong thing (one of them told me to just get on with my life as it was just a bunch of cells!).

I was a complete wreck for the next two months, as I just couldn't believe that my baby had died. People think that because the baby is unborn, it is less important or easier to deal with when it dies, but it isn't.

As my fiance hadn't been with me at the time, he felt like he hadn't had a chance to say goodbye. So we tied one of the scan photos onto a helium balloon, and then let it go by 'The Angel' - one of the monuments in our town. That did actually help quite a lot.

One of the things that helped me the most was something that my fiance said. I was crying over the fact that I wasn't going to be a mum and he said, "You are a mum, nothing can take that away from you, he just can't be here." And the Miscarriage message board is so good because you can cry, laugh and scream with the other women and know that they understand 100 per cent.'