Amelia

When I was a little girl I had a favourite book, it was so much a favourite I can even remember the bookshop where we bought it, not the name or the place but just the shop, I know it was on the mainland and it had been raining. I still have the book, 'Come Back Amelia Bedelia'.

I loved this book so much that as soon as I was old enough to think about having children I said I would name my daughter Amelia, not Amelia Bedelia but Amelia Millicent (after my maternal Grandmother). As my friends and family have also always known this they dutifully resisted naming their own girls Amelia.

Now I'm having a baby girl but she won't be called Amelia. As I have mentioned, earlier this year I had a miscarriage and both RD and I, independently, believe that that child would have been a baby girl, and in my head she is Amelia.

At 10 weeks I may not have known much about her, but she's not forgotten, she's at the seaside where we were when we lost her, and she's called Amelia.