BEN After nearly two years of trying for a baby and a little help from a drug called Clomid, I finally fell pregnant.  The heartache of endless months of disappointment were finally over and we could absorb ourselves in preparation for our baby - we could finally join in conversations with friends about nursery colours and parent classes!  The pregnancy was straightforward – the usual sickness in the beginning but nothing out of the ordinary.  The weeks went by, we read the books, got in all the necessaries and painted the nursery in yellow and orange, appointments with the midwife were all standard stuff and we were just ticking off the weeks.  Nearing the end of the pregnancy I felt tired and fed up with being the size of an elephant but new that it would soon all be over.  My due date came and went and so I had an appointment at Bournemouth Hospital as part of the routine.  I was booked into Poole Hospital for the 19th February, the baby was due on the 3rd of Feb and because two weeks overdue took us to a Saturday (inductions aren’t done at a weekend) we were booked in for the Monday morning but to go to the Hospital on the Sunday night so that all the preparations could be done.  The midwife told us to have a monitoring done on the Saturday as that was exactly two weeks overdue just to make sure that the baby was ok.  We did this and the baby was ok – I was very nervous, I just wanted to have the baby and having read a lot of books and talked to lots of people just wanted to go into labour naturally without the aid of induction.  I felt like a failure – I couldn’t get pregnant without a little help from drugs and now I couldn’t even do the birth thing naturally!  After having the monitoring done and being sent away happy (ish) we went home.  Saturday night as I sat watching the TV the baby was moving and I’m sure having a game of football – he was that active!  Went to bed that night in nervous anticipation of the next couple of days and wondering what to expect.  Sunday morning I woke and thought I felt the baby move once.  But not again.  The baby didn’t do it’s usual morning somersaults, and although I felt a bit worried thought that maybe it knew what was going to happen and was conserving energy!  That day we went for a walk along Bournemouth seafront, and tried to relax.  Still nothing.  We were booked into Poole on Sunday evening so we got there and told the midwife straight away that the baby hadn’t moved.  She moved us straight into another room and tried to trace the heartbeat.  She couldn’t find it.  At this stage I was crying, at all my check ups whoever was listening for the heartbeat had always found it straight away – I knew there was something wrong.  She told us that maybe the equipment was faulty and that she would get a Doctor and scan machine up to the room.  We waited for what seemed an age and then a Doctor arrived.  I didn’t look at the screen I watched her face as she desperately looked for the heart to move.  And as she told us that the baby was dead I could see the tears in her eyes.  At this stage I stopped crying and my husband broke down – I found myself comforting him and I seemed to go numb.  I just remember thinking ‘ok so how do we get rid of it then’.  But I knew that I would have to go through labour – the Doctor confirmed this – it felt so wrong – why should I go through all that pain for nothing?  We were given some time to take all the information in and to phone relatives – I can remember phoning my Mum and saying “Mum, there is no baby.” She didn’t cry then, just asked if they should come down (they live 100 miles away), I told her no there was nothing they could do, and we would phone them later.  Relatives told, shock set in, we were taken down to delivery.  The induction process began, epidural set up and then all we had to do was to wait.  The seconds ticked by so slowly, but the midwives that were looking after us were great and so supportive.  We could never have got through those darkest hours without them.  At 11.38 Monday morning our little boy, our first son was born.  He weighed 8lb 9oz and every inch of him was perfect – except he wasn’t crying and he never opened his eyes.  The midwife took him and bathed him and clothed him and then brought him back to us.  Heather (Midwife/Counsellor) came in to see us to go through some formalities and suggested we took photo’s.  I remember thinking – that’s sick.  But I am so glad we did.  We had our digital camera with us so we took some photo’s of us with him – these are our most treasured possessions.  We had Benjamin Joseph baptised, the midwife took hand and foot prints for us and a lock of his hair, my Mum and Dad arrived at the hospital and also met and held our son and then at around 7pm that evening we left our son in a moses basket on a hospital bed, and we went home empty handed. The next few weeks (or is it months) were a blur of telephone conversations, crying, sobbing, anger, and pure heartache.  We had Ben cremated and although were warned there may be no ashes, there were some (something to do with his size!).  Post Mortem results were inconclusive – he just died, as apparently 1% of babies do.  So, medically there was no reason to not try and have another baby but could we really put ourselves through that again if there was nothing we could do to stop it happening again? …………………………………….