Kate Thomas knew from a young age that she wanted to be a mother. She met her husband Aaron when she was just 15 years old.
The childhood sweat hearts from Miskin in Rhondda Cynon Taf bought their first home when they were 19 and family was on the cards for them from a young age. The couple's journey to parenthood wasn't an easy one - but has left a lasting legacy for the children that they lost.
"We conceived our first child when I was 20. And unfortunately, that wasn't to be, a little boy, his name was Jack. But I lost him. We don't know how we lost him," Kate, 39, said.
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"That was the worst thing, you don't know. You never know your destiny. We as women, you always know when you want children, you always know when you want to be a mum, and for me it was that, I just wanted to be a mum and my husband wanted to be a dad.
"With grief, I think you learn to live a different way. It never stops hurting, but you learn to live. Every miscarriage I had, I lost them at such a late stage, it was always knowing they had become something, they had a heartbeat. So when we'd been through that 10 times, it became reality that children were never going to be for us. We didn't think we were ever going to be parents."
After the first three losses, Kate was under a consultant in order to explore what was going on. She underwent a laparoscopy and was flushed with blue dye. Kate had a history of endometriosis and was diagnosed with the condition when she was just 14 years old. According to the NHS, endometriosis is a condition where tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes. It makes periods severely painful and can also make it difficult to get pregnant.
"I remember them (consultants) taking me into an office and saying you're never going to conceive a child ever again." The news devastated the couple but they were told there was a chance pregnancy was possible with IVF. It was through IVF that they conceived their daughter, Faith.
"All the way through my journey I kept saying I've got faith, I'm going to have a child. I've got faith. And I fell pregnant with Faith, and it was the worst experience of my life falling pregnant. But also the best, the best feeling of my life, but every single day waking up thinking I was going to miscarry, just the worst feeling in the world.
"I used to think I was made of glass, I would walk out of my house and think right I can't fall, I can't catch a bug, I can't do anything wrong. Every single day of my pregnancy I thought I was going to lose my daughter.
"And it was hard for my husband too. There isn't enough support for men either. He had to watch me go through those losses too."
There was so much concern for Kate's mental health during this pregnancy that there was discussion about putting her on a mental health ward.
"I just kept saying I'm preparing myself for a loss," she said. "And then I had preeclampsia, and I thought that's it, this is the end of the road, this is going to be the end. I didn't prepare to give birth to my baby being alive. And that is the most horrific thing in the world. But she was. She was a stunning baby girl and I was very, very lucky. Every single day I think I'm the most luckiest girl."
Kate's anxiety around her daughter Faith continued into the postpartum period too. She said she was very protective of her and feared she would lose her.
Kate believes her anxiety stemmed from the grief that she experienced over the loss of her son Jack. She said: "It was very repressed, it was the forbidden topic. I felt like I had to protect myself. I felt like I was too lucky to have her.
"And then I went on to have another daughter, she was my miracle baby. We weren't trying, we didn't have IVF, she came out of nowhere. I remember my consultant coming in and saying 'I don't know how this has happened because your endometriosis is so bad, I don't know how you've conceived this child'."
That pregnancy didn't proceed without its complications however and Kate experienced bleeding early on. When she was examined because of this the consultant discovered she had a tilted womb and advised that putting in a stitch could help prevent further bleeding.
"And I carried to full term. It made my whole pregnancy different because I knew she wasn't going anywhere. She was safe.
"It is so magical that we have got two girls and we never replaced the boy. I've got two beautiful girls but I always feel like Jack was never replaced. Never."
Kate said she is open and transparent with her daughters about their brother Jack and the other losses that they went through. She believes it is important to not only keep Jack's legacy alive but make sure her daughters have an understanding of the issues that women and families face.
"My youngest will sometimes say 'is Jack with us?', she said 'Look mam there's one star in the sky' and I'm like, there he is."
Daisy was born four years after her big sister Faith, and as time went on and the girls were in school, Kate decided it was time for her to do something for herself. She was working in a healthcare centre at the time and the counsellors who worked there praised her friendly and welcoming manner with the clients and urged her to consider the profession. So she went to university to do just that.
"And the whole course, in my eyes, was dedicated to perinatal mental health. Every assignment I did on perinatal mental health. I think it almost allowed me the time and the space to be open and the time and the space to be me. I was writing it, I was writing assignments on Jack, almost booklets on him. And I did a presentation on Jack, and it was the first time for me I'd ever let go, I'd never spoken about it.
"That was the most empowering moment of my life, I think, because it allowed me to accept that it happened. And my university friends, we are all still very close, they said it was like they felt the earth move in that room. For me, it was like an epiphany, it was like wow, this needed to happen, I needed this moment."
She found opening up about Jack in this way so phenomenally moving that when she graduated she launched a counselling service for people going through the same things that she went through, for free. She created a 'tea and toast' network online over lockdown and more than 170 people were attending each week.
From that, she managed to achieve some funding to counsel couples and within the first 12 weeks had 50 referrals. She said she had no mental health support after she lost Jack 19 years ago and wanted to set up something so other parents didn't have to go without the support in the way that she did.
The project has been so successful Kate now runs it from a centre in Tonypandy called Mothers Matter. They offer free perinatal counselling, community home support, wellbeing workshops, peer groups, drop-in service, empowerment groups, mental health awareness classes and family events.
She said: "It has come from a place of true true heartache and loss for myself. This project now has changed me again, it opens your world up to so much and seeing how people overcome situations and are strong.
"This project is Jack's legacy, we've developed this because of what I went through." The project is run by Kate along with members of staff and volunteers, when WalesOnline visited the centre, a cooking class was running just hours after the joyful chaos of a fully booked baby group.
She wanted to share her story to help other women in her situation and make talking about miscarriage less of a taboo. If you would like to find out more about how you can get involved with Mothers Matter, visit their website here. You can also make a donation to the not-for-profit charity, here.
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