I have a story to tell you about what I’ve been up today but it will have to wait – I am off to Stockholm to visit my sister.

So long suckers!

As usual, it’s when the official period of mourning comes to an end that the real grieving begins. I am supposed to be over my baby’s death by now but I will never get over the loss. I still think about each of them and what they would be like by now, what our lives would be like. I miss my 15 month old the most, he would be the life and soul of the party by now. And my darling little 5 month old, she would have made all the suffering ok if she had lived.

I still keep an eye on the birth clubs on the message board that I frequent. It is partly out of punishment but also out of curiosity to see what my children would be up to by now. Some of the mums are pregnant again. I can’t understand anything any more.

I am coming up to my first ovulation since we have stopped trying. Is it any easier? Of course not. I always knew that it would be much, much harder to stop trying than it ever was to keep going. I have nothing to hope for, nothing to look forward to. I can’t even look at other pregnant women and console myself with the thought that it will be me one day. Every day I struggle to keep these thoughts at bay but today I have given up. It’s too hard. Everything is too hard. All I have left are memories of babies I never even got to hold, my dreams for their futures long since forgotten. I wish I could forget my dreams for my own future, they will take a lot longer to erase, probably a lifetime.

My hair is still falling out. I don’t really see a way out of the stress. Damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

According to my wide and varied team of medical professionals all over the country, all I need to do to stop my hair falling out is to relax. Super.

I am sitting very still in my chair, I am relaxed. Out of the corner of my eye I see another hair glide gently to the ground. It is only one hair, I will stay relaxed. No wait, I will just do a quick test to make sure it was just a rogue hair and then I will relax again. I run my hand through the back of my hair, feel no resistance and optimistically bring it round into my line of sight. Hmmmm – one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve hairs. F**K B****X A**E C**T!!!! In a moment of madness I decide to test the other side of my head, just in case. Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I went to buy some salon conditioner yesterday. I brought the usual one to the till and the girl said “Sorry, that one is for thick hair, we have one over here for fine hair”. What???? Is she blind?? Why can’t she see my thick, luscious locks? I bought it anyway, I reckon the hairs are still thick, even if there aren’t so many of them any more.

This morning at breakfast, as if it came to him in a bolt of lightning, DS announced suddenly, “I know what will stop your hair falling out……..a clip!”.

What a wise and thoughtful boy, he has a solution for everything.

Things have a way of working out.

What’s for you won’t pass you by.

Everything happens for a reason.

What’s meant to be is meant to be.

But tell me, is this just true when good things happen or does it also apply when your life falls apart?

Would you say to someone who had just lost their husband, “It was meant to be”, to someone who had just been diagnosed with cancer, “What’s for you won’t pass you by”?

Bollox.

My personal favourite: You get the children that were meant for you.

Seven dead and counting……it was obviously meant to be.

I don’t think I remember bleeding this much, this early on before. I am wearing a maternity pad and I’m still afraid to stand up in case I have another accident. I suppose that’s the downside of a good, strong, early implantation. And of course my stubborn refusal to give up on progesterone supplements, even when I knew deep down it was all over.

I also don’t remember crying so much and so consistently. The grief is more overpowering than when our baby died at 12 weeks. But then we had only lost one baby, now we have lost almost everything.

And now there’s something new, a terrible anxiety that I can’t identify. I have been depressed since our first miscarriage two years ago. I have never seen anyone about it as I have always been confident that there was only one cure. My brief bouts of pregnancy back up that theory. And no matter how bad I have felt, I have usually been able to manage my emotions on a cyclical basis. But how do I manage this anxiety, the feeling that something horrific is about to happen?

I don’t know how I’m going to cope now that my crutch of TTC has been taken away. Where will I find the usual portion of hope that comes with a new cycle? How on earth am I going to survive the regular servings of pregnancy and baby announcements? I suppose I am just going to have to get myself something that everybody else wants – a bestselling novel or a lotto win. Watch this space.

This is the end. Not because I have had six miscarriages (the final one is in the post), not because of the physical, emotional, financial strain. The reason we are stopping is because I am going bald.

For the last couple of months, I have experienced severe hair loss. I lose small clumps constantly throughout the day and every time I wash it or run my fingers through it, I remove large handfuls of hair. I finally got to see my hairdresser yesterday and she was alarmed by the amount of hair I have lost. I must see a medical practitioner immediately. My hair is now so thin that she had to cut my once long, flowing, golden locks into a limp bob.

This is no more.

It could be the steroids, it could be the blood thinners, it could be any or all of the hormones or the chronic period of stress. It could also be immunological. Whatever it is, I am very scared. So, after two and a half years of pain and grief I could never, ever have imagined, it was vanity that finally killed the cat.

Please, no sympathy.

So far, so sticky.

First thing this morning, my husband sent me this:

J caught me sobbing in front of the computer. I explained to him that sometimes when people are very, very happy, they cry. I showed him the video and told him that Daddy had sent it to me because he loves me very, very much. J threw his arms around me and said “I love you very, very much too”.

How much better can today get?!?!??

I am pregnant. It is my seventh pregnancy. I am still bleeding.

I am going to pretend I am normal and enjoy the moment.

After all, I am pregnant!

Update: managed to enjoy it for about 10 mins before I became paralysed with fear.

People often say that I am brave. I think it’s because no matter how many times I am knocked down, I get up and start again.

Other people think I am foolish, that it is time to stop and get on with my life. They don’t leave comments on my blog, but I know they’re out there.

Regardless of what camp they are in, what many people don’t understand is that I do this because I have no choice. It is neither bravery nor foolishness that drives me. It is the overpowering love for the child I have, the ones I have lost and the ones that I cannot imagine living without.

Some people say things like “I could never have gone through what you have to get my children”. All that means is that they didn’t have to. How do they know they wouldn’t have done it if things had been different? Nobody can say what they would or wouldn’t do in a situation until that situation is forced upon them. When I ask those people what lengths they would go to to save the lives of the children they have, they say “Oh, but that’s different”. Why? Because your children lived longer than mine? Because you never before had to contemplate living without them? Don’t people understand that the pain of infertility IS the pain of losing a child, over and over again?

Infertility was always my greatest fear, a Von Trapp sized family my greatest ambition. If we stop now, we’ll never get to play the Salzburg Music Festival.