His little hands were curled into perfect circles

His little hands were curled into perfect circles, and his features were recognisably those of his father, but our son, William Brighton Clover would never open his eyes and see the world.

Thanks to Dr. Shehata though, William’s loss did not remain unexplained and his baby sister is now lighting up our lives.

William died in utero on July 26th 2010 after an uneventful pregnancy when I had not suspected for a moment that there was anything wrong. He was 22 weeks old, which meant that I had to go into hospital and go through labour without the joyful prospect of a baby at the end of it.

The experience was traumatic, extremely frightening. I was 36 when we lost our first baby, but NHS tests did not find any reason for his death. Nevertheless I was determined not to leave any stone unturned before trying for another child. I couldn’t take the risk of losing another life so late along in a pregnancy and having to go through labour again or finding the remainder of my fertile years taken up with repeated miscarriages.

I read an article by Dr Shehata in the Daily Mail, and am so glad I stumbled across it. Dr Shehata believes that the majority of recurring miscarriages have an undiagnosed cause.

After a brief and friendly appointment and a few blood tests I was surprised but heartened to realise that there was a reason we had lost William. I suffer from two conditions that make it difficult to carry a baby to term. Firstly, my body does not absorb folic acid properly – I suffer from the MTHFR gene mutation – which means I need 12 times the recommended does of folic acid during pregnancy.

Furthermore, I have a high count of Natural Killer cells, which are toxic to the placenta, and likely caused me to miscarry William so late, as he began to grow faster and needed the placenta to work harder.

To conceive the second time, I had to take aspirin, extra folic acid, progesterone, and steroids to dampen down my immune response and have monthly intrallipid infusions, which meant flying back to London from Moscow where we live for the intravenous treatment once a month till I was 5 months along, but all the effort was paid off and our reward was a beautiful daughter.

Jaya Sarah Clover was born on August 2nd 2012, and she is a bouncing giggling bundle of joy. After the trauma of losing William, to have successfully had a perfect healthy little girl really feels like a miracle.