Today (Friday, 7th May) was supposed to be the day we got to see our bean for the first time.

We decided to book a private reassurance scan, it was originally going to be Thursday 6th May but the sonographer was unavailable so they rebooted us for the Friday.

It was also the day that my sister in law got the keys to her new place having been living with us for the past six month. I felt sad about them going but it also felt like the start of a new adventure for all of us.

I’d been spending hours every evening researching the best cots, prams, baby monitors and trying to learn everything I could about things like how to change a nappy, baby routines and the whole pregnancy process.

I’d even managed to find a review of the same 8 week scan with the same company on YouTube.

We were both nervous and excited. I picked my wife up from work at lunch time then we went home for a bit before setting off.

When we parked up someone pulled up alongside us, not allowing enough space for my wife to get out so I had to move the car up a little bit. It just looked like a small admin office.

It wasn’t big on the inside but it was nicely laid out. The couple that parked next to us went into the room for their scan first whilst we filled out forms and paid the balance for the scan.

They weren’t in there for long and when they came out they were sat at a desk with a computer to pick out the image they wanted to take away with them as a print.

We went into the room, it was dimly lit and my wife was asked to take the lower half of her clothes off and lie on the bed.

There were two staff in with us, the sonographer who was a little Chinese looking lady who my wife found hard to hear.

The other lady explained that once the sonographer had done some checks she’d show the scan on a big wall mounted it.

It didn’t feel like we were in there for very long at all. The sonographer asked about any spotting or bleeding. She said she continued to search.

I could see on the screen a definite blob but she explained it had no heart beat. Within seconds we had gone from excitement to shock.

We knew that the chances of miscarriage were higher for an older mum but we still didn’t think it would happen to us. All the signs from her body, the extreme fatigue, the nausea and the growing breasts and sensitive nipples were there. She hadn’t had any bleeding or abdominal pain or anything.

They asked if we had any questions. My heart was saying are you sure it’s not just the position of the baby, how certain are you that our little baby wasn’t alive? But I didn’t say that I was just in stunned silence trying to comfort my wife who kept saying she was sorry as if it was her fault.

If it was anyone’s fault it was mine. I’m the one that didn’t want kids and left it until now to change my mind. Maybe this was nature’s way of saying I’m not good enough to be a dad?

They took us to a separate room and gave us a report but there was no photo of our baby to look at. They read through everything. It was 1.55 cm, which was slightly smaller than it should have been but only a week out.

They said they’d contact the hospital who would do blood tests and then we went home.

We went straight up to bed and just held and hugged each other. I felt so hopeless. I just wanted to know why. We waited and we waited and we waited for the hospital to ring.

They eventually rang around 18:18 but it was as if they hadn’t received any information and my wife had to tell them what happened.

They offered us a second scan to double check and at that moment we has some hope back. Maybe the sonographer just got it wrong?

Our second scan is booked for 0930 on Sunday at the hospital and I’m just hoping for a miracle but every second until that scan is going to feel like hours. I just can’t sleep.

My wife has a worry jar on her bedside and a stack of different coloured note paper that she had categorised into worries about work, me, her sister, other and ‘bean’. I can see she’s moved the yellow block marked for ‘bean’ and it set me off in tears.

I feel like we’ve had something stolen from us and that this is just a nightmare we will wake up from.

Is this our last chance gone? Did I leave it too late? Will she grow to resent me for giving her this brief hope? enough to feel what it would be like but cruelly taken away!