Doubled up on the floor in my hotel room, I knew that things were getting really bad. I tried to have a shower to make myself feel better and remember saying out loud ‘hold on, hold on’ but I knew it wasn’t meant to be.

I had to ring my boss then and say I needed help to get to a hospital. He managed to get the address of the nearest one from the hotel and came with me in the taxi as the waves of contraction-like pains washed over me.

Everything from then on was a bit of a blur but the first hospital we arrived at was very busy and I remember getting into a long queue and being told it was a two-hour wait.

Somehow, someone who spoke English told us there was another hospital just across the way where I may be able to get seen quicker and we found our way there on foot, where I remember this strange sort of post-apocalyptic setting with empty corridors and no-one around, and just staggering up and down trying to find someone (looking back it was quiet because it was the weekend).

Suddenly, a woman appeared from nowhere and she took one look at me and spoke kindly to me in English saying she would find someone. I never saw her again and never found out who she was but a porter immediately appeared with a wheelchair and took me into a side room.

I was then taken in to see the sonographer who confirmed I’d lost the baby and as soon as I was examined the pain stopped. I didn’t want to look properly but was aware that a lump of tissue had come out of me and the relief was immediate.

The sonographer spoke wonderful English and was very compassionate and told me that the anaesthetist would be along as soon as they could to talk me through having the operation to make sure everything had come out of the womb. It only took about an hour for the anaesthetist to arrive in the private room I was sharing and they too were very kind and thorough, explaining the procedure in perfect English.

I was wheeled off down the empty dark corridors and woke up again back in the private room and that was it. I stayed overnight as the doctors wanted to check my bloods and they gave me antibiotics to take, although in the morning they said I didn’t need them as the blood test levels were ok. In Germany, I discovered that they automatically take a biopsy if they can after a miscarriage and send it off for testing, which makes it doubly frustrating that they don’t do that in the UK until you have had three miscarriages. The very sympathetic doctor explained that the results would be back in a week but as I didn’t live in Germany, I probably wouldn’t get them. He wished me well and hoped that next time I would have a more positive outcome. I didn’t have to pay anything, my European Health Card was sufficient for the treatment, and I flew back on the flight that I had always planned to.

It had all seemed like a dream – I went to Germany pregnant and returned not pregnant. I had an awards presentation to co-host a week after the miscarriage and my wedding a week after that, and I just carried on as normal, whilst feeling empty inside. But I’ll always remember how kind everyone was to me in Frankfurt, and intend to follow up on that biopsy, just in case.