Rachel Tooze, 35, from Surrey, has suffered three miscarriages, one of which happened 16 weeks into the pregnancy. This meant Ms Tooze had already been for her 12-week scan, after which she had told her friends, family and colleagues she was expecting.

“To have to then tell people that I’d lost the baby, there was a huge amount of disappointment, which kind of compounded the grief,” she tells The Independent, explaining that for friends and family it can be difficult to know how to express sympathy because miscarriage is still not widely spoken about - despite more high profile women like Meghan Markle sharing their experiences.

“When you’re grieving someone close to you, there’s a lot more openness in talking about that,” says Ms Tooze. “So, you know what’s normal, and there’s more convention around how you respond to people who are going through that, whereas pregnancy loss is a very specific sort of grief.

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