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When you first start trying to conceive, you're conscious of embarking on a big adventure. Granted, there's nothing that can truly prepare you for what parenthood means in real terms, but looking your partner in the eyes as you make love, knowing each time may be the time you conceive your longed-for child... there's nothing quite like it. Except perhaps getting that positive test to say you're pregnant.

The dream is suddenly reality and due dates are calculated, plans made, nursery colours chosen, grandparents informed of the new arrival. Until the pregnancy comes to an abrupt halt and that precious little life is gone.

I've never met a woman who expected to miscarry any of her pregnancies, nor one who knew, prior to her first miscarriage, that some 1 in 4 pregnancies ends that way. And while all women recover physically and emotionally at different speeds, rare is the woman who can completely put that first miscarriage behind her before she tries again.

For those who miscarry their first pregnancy, the story can be different to those who miscarry while trying for a sibling. Not yet having had that much-wanted baby can breed a fear that you will never carry a baby to term, and that fear can turn into desperation as the months pass, either with no further pregnancies, or with successive miscarriages. Even those with children may become obsessed with conceiving a sibling, especially if they had no trouble with the first.

At times like these, relationships easily become strained. While husbands and boyfriends may feel helpless in the face of the grief and determination, they may also want to protect their wife or girlfriend from further grief and not be ready to start trying again as soon as her. If getting pregnant and then miscarrying is a cause of such distress, it's not illogical for them to want to abandon altogether, just to see her smile again, even though she may see the only way to happiness as being through a successful pregnancy.

Also, while the months of trying for a baby prior to that first miscarriage may be full of wonder and tenderness, it's very easy to slip into a production line mindset. Ovulation predictor kits, temperature charts, precise intercourse timings and obsessive knicker-watching and symptom-spotting in the latter half of the cycle are enough to put serious strain on any relationship, with men feeling 'used' as their womenfolk plan an almost military campaign.

And this is all before you fall pregnant. While seeing the little line come

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