This time my miscarriage experience was very different from the previous ones because my nonviable pregnancy was diagnosed before any symptoms of miscarriage had started.

This time I had a choice – did I wait for nature to do what was inevitable, have medical management or have surgical management.

My priority was obtaining tissue for genetic testing so a natural miscarriage was not the best way forward in case I passed it in the toilet and could not retrieve it.

Friends and my consultant advised me against medical management due to personal bad experiences and because I explained I was keen to avoid as much pain and bleeding as possible.

Surgical management was therefore my ‘best’ option.

After another internal scan to triple check that the pregnancy was not going to continue, I was booked in for an ERPC – an evacuation of retained product of conception.

The name is clinical, devoid of emotion and thoroughly terrifying. But for me, in this instance, it was the right choice.

The full details of exactly what an ERPC involves are available on many websites, but I found the Miscarriage Association’s leaflet, found here, very helpful, while the nurses on the Early Pregnancy Unit also answered all of my questions and put my mind at rest.

The worst case scenarios that they have to tell you about are concerning, but this is really a very straightforward operation that is carried out thousands of times a year.

I had a couple of tablets inserted around my cervix to soften it so that the necessary tubes and things could be more easily persuaded to enter the uterus and remove everything that needed to be removed.

That was fine: better than having a pessary put in during the induction of labour, if you have ever had to endure that process as well.

I was taken down to theatre and given a general anaesthetic while surrounded by what seemed like an awful lot of doctors, who were all chatting away to me and really helped to put me at ease.

I knew nothing more until I was woken up in recovery where I was told that all had gone well but I had lost more blood than expected.

I was also pleased to hear that they had managed to collect and send the pregnancy tissue off to the lab for testing so that we might get some idea what had gone wrong.

Shortly after I started to have quite a lot of pain which even liquid morphine couldn’t touch.

The surgeon came to see me and felt my abdomen to see if there was any internal bleeding but all seemed as it should, so I had some other painkillers, followed a bit later by some intravenous paracetamol and ibuprofen.

The pain suddenly stopped and I had no more discomfort at all.

My next problem was my blood pressure which was stubbornly low at 70-something over 50.

I was kept in recovery for four hours until it finally hit the 80 mark before dipping again once I was back on the ward.

I had a feeling something wasn’t quite right with my blood when the nurse had to wring my arm like a sponge to even get enough blood out of it to test!

I ended up staying in hospital over night and the blood test revealed that I had become anaemic so I was prescribed two 200mg ferrous sulphate tablets a day for two weeks.

The next couple of days I felt incredibly weak, dizzy and light-headed until the iron tablets suddenly kicked in and I started to feel like my old self once more.

I had a tiny bit of bleeding for a few days after the surgery but nothing like the amount lost when I have miscarried naturally.

I gave myself a couple of weeks to heal physically and emotionally before going back to normal life, and by the end of that time I felt that I really needed to get back into my old daily routines.

Surgically managing my miscarriage meant that the whole process was under much more control and I did not have to go through the trauma of passing my pregnancy material myself or bleeding heavily and spontaneously.

Emotionally this miscarriage was very different to my 11 week one.

This time there was no baby – just an empty amniotic sac – so I didn’t mourn for my dead child in the same way.

I knew earlier on that there was not going to be a baby so I was not as invested in it and the time between my initial scan and my ERPC meant that I had time to accept what was going to happen rather than it be a complete shock.

I certainly did not, do not, feel the devastation of before and I actually feel guilty for that.

I think some of this is due to a feeling of inevitability that I would miscarry again, but also it was because I had built a protective wall around myself in case the worst did happen.

When it did, I couldn’t feel the hurt to the same extent because I had not let myself get carried away with thoughts of having a baby and being pregnant.

I barely cried at all during the whole process of having my ERPC.

I knew what had happened, I knew what had to happen next and I just wanted it all to be over so I could move on. Surgical management allowed me to do that more quickly than waiting for nature to take its course.