Miscarriage is one of those things that you know is apparently very common, that you know must be awful, but that you may not have actually ever spoken about with anybody.

Many people who experience it first hand keep quiet.

But I knew as soon as I had my third miscarriage in August that I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. I needed to tell people because I needed their support and I needed to acknowledge that this terrible thing had just happened to me.

Though this was my third miscarriage, it is the only one that I really think about and that really upsets me.

I was 11 weeks pregnant when this one happened whereas I had only been about five and six weeks for the others. It trumped the lot in the worst way possible.

At 11 weeks, this baby had really become part of me. I looked pregnant, I felt pregnant and I had dared to dream that I was really going to have this baby.

After my early miscarriages, losing this one was the thing I feared the most, so the fact that I got so tantalisingly close to the supposed ‘safe’ point of 12 weeks was a cruel blow.

I had spent weeks fretting and fearing that I would start bleeding, but each week that passed I got that little bit more confident.

I had had my first midwife appointment, I had let them work out a due date – something I thought had ‘cursed’ my second failed pregnancy – and I had let myself wonder how I would celebrate my birthday and Christmas without a drink.

I was still in my hospital bed, alone during the evening after my husband had gone home to look after our son, when I told the first people what had happened.

The miscarriage hadn’t actually been confirmed at this point as I hadn’t passed the ‘pregnancy matter’, but the chances of anything surviving that much blood loss were remote.

The messages of sorrow, support and shock arrived from friends from far flung corners of the country and from just down the road, and I felt that little bit less alone.

During that first week after it happened flowers, chocolates and cards arrived full of kind thoughts and caring.

People I know well shared their miscarriage stories with me, which they had kept to themselves until now, and we lamented the injustice and the grief together.

I spoke about the trauma I had been through again and again and I realised that I would and could get through this devastating situation.

Nearly eight weeks on, the grief has dulled but is still there. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about how far along I should be, when I don’t remember how it happened, when I don’t wish I still had my baby.

The tears come less frequently but the feeling that something is missing doesn’t go away.

It’s like someone took a sledgehammer to my soul and not all the pieces have been found yet.

Some people thoughtfully still ask me how I am. Many do not. They don’t mean anything by it – they just don’t understand. You can’t understand if you haven’t been through it.

How I am is a hard question to answer anyway because physically, I am healed; mentally, I function everyday; but emotionally I am sad and I am angry and I am desperate for my baby.

I long to hold another baby in my arms. I just hope I don’t have to wait too long.