Naively, I had assumed that once I got pregnant again, things would feel better. I was wrong. For my entire pregnancy I was, if I’m being really honest, a bit mad.

I was hooked on reassurance. My hospital offered a reassurance scan at seven weeks to check that the pregnancy was developing. I bit their hand off, arriving the second the hospital waiting room opened on the day I reached seven weeks. When the doctor confirmed that there was a heartbeat and that it was in the right place, I had maybe an hour of blissful relief. And then, on the bus home, the worry started again.

At about 10 weeks into my pregnancy, I had a bleed and was so convinced that it was another miscarriage that I had a glass of wine and a cigarette. I dragged myself to the hospital the next morning to be scanned, ready to be told the worst. My messages on WhatsApp from that day talk about ‘the baby’ in the past tense. To my utter shock, it transpired that she was fine. I was seen by two doctors, and for a few more hours, I was calm.

Then, the anxiety started again. What if I’d imagined it? What if the little fish-like thing bobbing around on the screen didn’t actually have a heartbeat? They’d said she was measuring on the small side – what did that really mean? Within hours, I was on Mumsnet reading about comparable cases, messaging women who hadn’t posted for five years to ask what happened with their pregnancies.

“Most people have 2 pregnancy scans – I had 11”: why we need to talk about pregnancy anxiety after miscarriage and baby loss