Apologies for the radio silence – I went underground for a little while, burying myself away while I tried to come to terms with the loss of another baby.

Just days after seeing the heartbeat and recognising my child amid the black and white confusion of a scan , the little busy heart just stopped, leaving my own beating alone and lost.

From the moment I became pregnant with my first daughter, I have celebrated the wonder of my body, amazed at its ability to provide life-support, to be a host, a nurturing, building wondrous machine. But it never occurred to me that life has an opposite, that death is as real and present as life. And so it should be that my body that can hold life, should also hold death.

For a few weeks after our scan until I knew things had gone wrong, my body was a grave. My baby’s grave. And so it is. For two children I was a life-support and for two others I held their life but also their death within myself. I write this now, not because I want everyone to know, but because I cannot continue to write this blog as if nothing has happened. I have to acknowledge my baby, give it its history, before I carry on with my written amazement at my two beautiful girls.

For a while our hearts danced together, and like all the four hearts that have beat alongside mine, it changed my tune, and I now beat a rhythm that is better for its accompaniment, however short.