'I was wracked with guilt'

When Cherie Blair announced that she was pregnant with Leo, I had just suffered a miscarriage. I remember thinking that all the world seemed pregnant and that while I cried, the world rejoiced in her fecundity.

It seems an irony now that as I am about to give birth to twins, it is the Prime Minister's wife who has suffered a miscarriage. She may already have four children but my heart goes out to her. The fact that she has a large family, a high-flying career and a husband running the country will not matter much to Cherie who now has to come to terms with the loss of a baby and the end of the dreams which accompany the arrival of every new child.

Losing a baby is traumatic under any circumstances. I had already lost two babies when I miscarried at the age of 36 in Africa. The first two pregnancies, both in the previous year, had been ectopic and terminated, so when I got pregnant again while on holiday with my husband we were overjoyed. I was too far away from a chemist or hospital to be able to test but within two weeks of conception I was feeling sick and dizzy and there were strange sensations in my womb.

The increased risk of another ectopic meant that I would have to be scanned before the end of my sixth week of pregnancy, nevertheless, I calculated I had enough time to accept a commission to write a report on a Wildlife Conservancy in Northern Kenya. This meant staying out a further two weeks after the end of our holiday. Looking back I shall always wonder if that decision was the reason for the miscarriage. All through those two weeks I felt funny; nervous and excited but also vulnerable. I missed my husband very much.

The day I was due to fly back to England I realised something was wrong. It was six thirty in the morning and I was alone, everybody had been out since dawn. I kept hoping the bleeding would stop. The nearest hospital was a several-hour ride of rough driving over bumpy roads. Finally I got through to my husband on a satellite phone with dodgy batteries borrowed from a neighbour. "Give me two hours and then call back, I'll find out what to do," Peter said croakily. When I did, his reaction scared me. He had spoken to an obstetrician at St Mary's Paddington specialising in older women's pregnancies. I had to get myself to Nairobi immediately and have a scan that afternoon. If this pregnancy was also ectopic and caught in the fallopian tube it would be too dangerous for me to fly home. I just had time to tell Peter to ring Trish, a friend in Nairobi, before the phone went dead.

When my tiny plane touched down in Nairobi two hours later, Trish was waiting to rush me to Nairobi hospital. I felt so alone and wished Peter was with me. The radiologist did nothing to allay my fears. "You worry me, young lady," he said when he had poked around inside and declared that he could see no evidence of a recent pregnancy in the womb. "We have to consider the possibility of another ectopic." I started hyperventilating, while in England an ectopic can be dealt with by injection, in Africa it means a big, old-fashioned scar. Supposing there was a mistake and I ruptured. Fortunately, the surgeon disagreed and diagnosed a miscarriage. Even so, they decided it was not wise for me to travel home alone. Peter flew out the next morning and after several days resting took me back to England.

Back home, I rushed to see my doctor. I knew I was alright but most of all I wanted consolation. I was racked with guilt as I retraced my steps wondering if there was something I did or didn't do which might have prevented the miscarriage. The doctor assured me there wasn't, pointing out the statistics that at my age the was at least a one in six - some say much higher - chance of miscarriage. But I couldn't stop wondering. I remembered the day when I was driving back to the house where I was staying and my jeep hit a rock and I flew into the air, landing back on the seat with a heavy thud. Just as Cherie will wonder a hundred times over whether standing out in the rain at the Commonwealth Games or taking on one speech too many may have caused her to lose her fifth child.

But it isn't just guilt that we have to contend with, there is also the hormones which rack a woman's body with depression and the shock. "Women who are used to being in control sometimes find it very difficult to accept a pregnancy loss," said Ruth Bender Atik, National Director of the Miscarriage Association which provides a telephone support service. It was several weeks before I found a way out of the tunnel of isolation. I found that I needed to talk about it and probably embarrassed people with my emotions but it was the only way I could cope with the pain.

It wasn't until I became pregnant again through the miracle of IVF that I realised how deep was the trauma. I started bleeding in my 10th week and after the doctor had reassured me that I was fine I went to see the acupuncturist who has held my hand throughout this pregnancy. "The babies are fine, it is the mother who is terrified," she said. I don't know whether Cherie is strong enough to try again for another baby, at 47 she was lucky to get pregnant, but if she does, I hope she finds someone to help her through the fear of losing another child. Tragically, once you have lost confidence in your body, nine months can seem a very long time.