Mother who lost five babies hails landmark ruling
WHEN Emma Benjamin suffered five miscarriages in the space of a few years she was left heartbroken.
The strain sucked all the joy out of pregnancy, and with doctors unable to work out what was going wrong, she blamed herself.
Mrs Benjamin, 34, from Hertfordshire, lost four of her babies in a single year, and hopes that the British research will spare other women from enduring the same distress.
Her first child Daniel, who is now six, was born after a problem-free pregnancy, and when he was nine months old Mrs Benjamin began to try for a second child.
She quickly became pregnant but miscarried at just six weeks. Three more miscarriages followed. Mrs Benjamin, a chartered accountant, said: ‘I was destroyed and I blamed myself.
‘I must have done something wrong. Heartbroken but also angry, I was desperate to get some answers.
‘I had lots of tests but I never found out why. It got to the point that when I did a positive pregnancy test, there was no excitement. There was no joy in it.’
After her fourth miscarriage, Mrs Benjamin, whose husband Saul is a 35-year- old hedge fund manager, went for treatment at a private fertility clinic.
She became pregnant again and her second son Olly was born four years ago. Another miscarriage followed before she had her third child, Amelia, who is now 20 months old.
Mrs Benjamin told the BBC: ‘I found it frustrating that I never had the answers as to why I kept miscarrying.
‘If this research had come earlier and could have helped provide answers, I guess it could maybe have saved a lot of heartache.’
She added: ‘If it can help other women from going through what I went through, then it will be amazing.’