IT WAS around this time last year that things started to go wrong in our house.

Our monarch was once derided by some for using the Latin phrase annus horribilus to describe what a horrible 365 days she had just experienced, but those two words pretty much sum up how we felt, too.

I think things were worse because we were not really prepared for any of what happened or what fate had in store for us. As we walked our daughter to school for her first day of Year R, we were full of hope and optimism.

I was pregnant, approaching the supposed magic 12 week milestone, and we were looking forward to things finally falling into place after some years of struggle with my chronic back condition, surgery, injections and pain clinic appointments.

We had no idea that, within a few weeks, we would have experienced our first late miscarriage and that things would seemingly be going very wrong for our child at school, too.

The next months would dissolve into a horrible muddle of further health problems, meetings, appointments, letters, and yet another late miscarriage, plus uncomfortable familial revelations which required, at the least, some time to digest.

We thought, twice, that we’d be welcoming a new member of the family and planned accordingly, only for it to end, both times, with the delivery of dead babies in hospital.

To compound our difficulties, some of our closest family and friends went through their own health scares, disappointments and heartbreak, all of which made us feel even more that there was a pox on our house and everyone associated with it. By the time it came to December, I couldn’t see past all of the problems, and honestly didn’t know how to find the strength to drag myself through anything more.

As I look back now, feeling slightly stronger and happier, I am grateful that my husband and I have come through all of this with – I think – our relationship unscathed.

We have learned new things about each other, and about our individual reactions to severe grief and trauma as we have gone along.

We have had moments were we have felt so alone, as if we only had each other in the world to rely on or to confide in, so personal were our failures and disappointments. It’s incredibly hard to brave sharing the emotions resulting from such experiences with friends, who are all, of course, just trying to get on with their own lives.

Thankfully, rather than push my other half and I apart, all of it brought us closer together, and I am glad every day that I have my partner there on my side.

I do carry with me the memories of the worst moments, particularly the deaths and deliveries of our lost children.

And the sight of my husband carrying the small white casket containing our baby to the front of the crematorium will haunt me forever.

I think aspects of who I am have definitely altered, for the good and for the worse, and possibly the same applies to my husband.

But we have carried on putting on step in front of the other. What more can you do.