Pregnancy after loss is full of contradictions. It is hope that feels cautious, like it might dissolve if you breathe too hard. It is learning to live again inside a body that remembers grief.

I am now officially in my third trimester, and each day brings small signs of life: a flutter, a roll, a hiccup, the steady rhythm of his heart. I am growing a baby I will meet, hold and raise. But I have also carried a baby I never got to meet. For 13 weeks, my body held her. It nurtured her, protected her, grew her placenta, still believing she was safe. And in a way, she was. My husband told me then: “She only ever knew love and warmth”, and that has never left me.

That first pregnancy made me a mother. It changed how I moved through the world, my sense of self, and how I understood love; the kind that expands quietly and invisibly into areas of your heart that you didn’t know were there before. When we learned her heart had stopped, it was as though mine did too, at least for a while.........

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