It took 6 hours to have a 20 minute procedure (waiting for medication to arrive, to kick in, for bloods to come back, for them to find the doctor, to prescribe pain medicine for healing time etc), and it cost £12.60. For parking. For all of this, £12.60, and with a medical exemption prescription for codeine: free.

I needed the codeine. The procedure was under local anaesthetic so, after an uncomfortable start and a 30-second injection of said anaesthetic into my cervix (death), I felt so little. I cried, still, and hurt very deeply in my heart, chest. I think the painkillers kicked in and relaxed muscles I'd been holding for a fortnight and the floodgates opened. I had been really hurting.

I remember a fair bit. I asked Rob if we could go on a big holiday after this, maybe to Iceland - unanimous agreement from the three women helping me. I thanked the doctor because I know this procedure isn't available to a lot of women - she agreed. I asked Rob if we could have Sunday lunch at his parents house - this can be arranged. At one stage, I asked him why nobody had called yet 'even though i'm famous' (very funny. They'd given me Penthrox, 'the green whistle', which ripped my throat to shreds and sent me into space for 10 seconds at a time, hence my 1920s hollywood starlet lament). It was all fine, and I am fine. They believe they got everything. I saw the table with all the bits on, and what they call the yolk... I don't regret looking.

The hardest part was when the misoprostol kicked in while we were eating lunch during the waiting period. The codeine, paracetamol, misoprostol, and anti-sickness tablet hit me like a brick wall, and my blood sugar plummeted to 2.2mmol from my lunch-time insulin. No idea why this happened. Rob said my face drained, totally white. I was shiverring, cramping hard, shaking all over, feeling like I was dying, in total honestly, within 10 minutes, and the low-blood-glucose anxiety making my heart hammer in my chest and we had to cross the hospital to get back to the ward, two floors and countless corridors away. But we got there, slowly, ghost-white and stopping often, avoiding staring eyes, etc.

That was the hardest part, honestly. The insulin overdose alongside a drug designed to shed a pregnancy-thickened uterine lining within the hour did not combine well with a stomach crammed with medicinal fruit pastilles, a cocktail of pain relief that I fortunately very rarely need, and the worst cramps I've ever experienced in my life. I felt like I was turning inside out. I would rather have turned inside out. The procedure was okay. The body rebelling against itself in an attempt to purge the interloper chemicals - this was not okay.

But I did it. It happened to me, and it was available to me, to save my life, to start again, and I didn't have to beg not to have to pass it naturally after almost 4 weeks of waiting, still, with no end in sight, as women in countries with laws against this drug would have to do. I had the right to choose that procedure (MVA) and I'm glad that I did, glad that it's over and seemingly went well.

I thought a lot about the women who don't have this choice, who can only be saved once they've gone septic, actively dying, if at all. I feel incredibly grateful for the NHS and for a team of female doctors and nurses who believed me, treated me, and listened to me, and gave me the pain medication that I needed. That I made the decision, and my husband was with me the whole time - that I was asked and consulted, that he didn't have to give his permission, and that I was treated so gently but with so much respect. It's such an important right to have and I'm really grateful it exists. We can try again.

There were no signs at all that anything was wrong. Me and Rob were holding hands and looking at this tiny thing in this big black circle, not knowing what we should be seeing and not knowing whether we should hear something. The technician was so quiet.

There wasn't any bleeding, cramping, anything. I was still nauseous, exhausted, hyper-sensitive to smells and tastes: all the signs that said everything was going well, progressing, and I was pregnant. My body hadn't registered that the embryo had stopped growing and hadn't developed a heartbeat. My body just kept pumping me with hormones to support it, exhaust me, grow nothing.