Jo,

For more than 3 years you have hoped every cycle for AF to stay away, for this month to be the month. And for more than 3 years AF came, and smashed your hopes and dreams on the rocks until eventually you were too scared to even hope. Now you're PG, but those smashed dreams don't just wash away. Sushee is right, infertility doesn't go away just because you're PG, the repeated disappointment and sadness month after month doesn't just fade away. You would have to have 4 babies without conception problems to balance out the 3.5 years of waiting for this pregnancy! Of COURSE you feel scared and apprehensive! Of COURSE you fear to hope, after having your hopes smashed so many times.

It seems sometimes LTTTC is like holding your breath. Every month you try and try and hold your breath in hope and every month your hopes are smashed and then, with another cycle beginning with the last one ending, with a shuddering gasp you squash your disappointment and fears down and grab another breath to hold. After 3.5 years of that of COURSE it's hard to realise you're PG, you can breathe now.

Added to that for you there is the crushing blow of losing your baby at 8 weeks. I don't have fertility problems but i have had 2 m/cs and nothing takes away hope like loss. You'd have to be super-human to be able to brush that off during the same PREGNANCY as the loss, especially when you're scared even to grieve. But you should grieve. Have a good cry, for all those cycles of pain where you held your breath for nothing, for all the treatments that didn't work, for all the times you were forced to celebrate other women's pregnancies and births when you were still waiting, seemingly endlessly, for your own turn. Cry it out hun, let yourself feel the pain of that. Infertility can be so bloody cruel - THIS is your chance to breathe. Mourn for your little lost twin. A miscarriage is the death of a child early in pregnancy - for many women the scan reveals this, not the physical loss. It was always the loss i saw, to see a baby without a heartbeat or just a womb with only one where there had been two would have been just as, if not more, devastating to me. Your loss is as real and valid as anyone else's and after all you went through to fall pregnant probably even MORE painful.

It sounds like DH might be having similar denial problems with the pregnancy. He's been waiting for 3.5 years too, and not grieving your little one might seem like the less painful option. The two of you are SO used to having to put your hopes away and try again try again try again, it must be terrifying to even hope that this is it, your hopes are coming true. Even harder still to admit they were coming true and have been dashed again by the loss of one of your little twins. And from that almost impossible to enjoy the pregnancy when you already know how cruel life can be so concretely.

So have your sadness Jo, it is YOUR sadness. THen go and look in the mirror, pull your top up. Your baby is coming. Look. Your baby is coming, you can breathe again. Now go buy some clothes that fit!

Love and

Bx