My name is Carina.

On March 5th 2016 our little girl was born sleeping at 38 weeks and two days. This is our story.

I started trying to have a baby when I was 20 years old, but I was told soon after that there was a problem and no chance I would ever conceive naturally.

So I started along the road of fertility treatment, at age 34 and after four failed IVF (ICSI) attempts we made the decision to use a surrogate to have our child for us. We used one of the embryos that we made during our last round of fertility treatment. In June 2015 my younger sister was implanted with our embryo and in July 2015 I was able to say out loud the words I had been waiting to say for over 15 years.

We are having a baby!!!!!!

Excited didn’t even come close to the way I felt, nor how our whole family and group of friends felt. I was instantly in love with our baby, and although there were times which were hard when I had to watch my baby grow in my sister’s body, I knew that this was how our baby was meant to come into the world. At 27 weeks we found out we were having a baby girl. I didn’t even realise until that point how much I had wanted a girl, and then the buying began. I went all out!!! This baby was going to have everything and I was so prepared to be a mommy.

My sister and I had fought the consultants for a c section, that was what my sister wanted, she felt it would be easier to detach if she had our little girl in a different way to how she had had her own children. So the consultants agreed and the date of March 10th was booked in.

On March 4th we went to the midwife, everything was fine, we discussed the possibility of me being able to breast feed!!! I never thought I’d be able to do that, and was eager to make the call on the 7th March to get everything I needed to try and pump.

Unfortunately I didn’t get to make that call.

At 11.25pm my brother-in-law called to say something was wrong and my sister had lost blood. We went to the hospital and at 1am on March 5th 2016 they told us our baby had no heartbeat.

I didn’t even realise this could happen, I thought that if anything went wrong this late on they could just get the baby out, we were just five days from our scheduled due date!

My sister decided to give birth to our daughter naturally and at 6.52pm on March 5th, Raeah Shan was born. She was 7lbs 12ozs (a chunky little monkey).

She was and always will be our beautiful daughter.

Following a placenta investigation we were told that Raeah had died due to Vasa Praevia, a very rare condition where the umbilical cord doesn't implant enough into the placenta, it’s very hard to diagnose.

I miss her every second of every day. I can't believe this happened to her or us. It is a very cruel world we live in.

Sleep tight my little bear, Mommy loves you very much xxxxxxx