A Carlisle woman who lost her baby following an ectopic pregnancy is speaking out to raise awareness.

Louise Bell, 26, of Melbourne Terrace, off Greystone Road, and her fiance Enio were hoping to start a family, and were excited to get a positive pregnancy test.

But just a few weeks later, she found out it was an ectopic pregnancy - when the fertilised egg gets stuck outside the womb - and needed urgent surgery.

Louise had to have one of her Fallopian tubes removed and fears it has affected her fertility, having so far been unable to conceive for a second time.

She explained: “I was 25 when it happened, last October. I just started bleeding. They passed it off as a miscarriage at first.”

Louise was in so much pain she went to the out-of-hours GP, who prescribed antibiotics, thinking it was a urine infection.

“I was in agony and up all night. The next day I went to my GP. They said it was possibly an ectopic pregnancy and sent me to hospital,” she said.

For some reason Louise said she wasn’t given an urgent scan, but they took blood tests and sent her home with painkillers. “I was quite upset. That night I admitted myself to hospital because I was in so much pain. I couldn’t walk,” she explained.

This time a scan and confirmed her fears. She was taken into surgery, and said the whole experience was very traumatic.

“It’s a life-threatening situation. Some people do die. It was keyhole surgery, to remove my right tube. That was devastating,” she said.

“The whole thing was quite upsetting. You feel like you’ve failed as a woman.”

Louise said it also affected her mental health “It hit me quite hard, and you don’t really get much support. All I really got was a leaflet when I was leaving hospital,” she explained.

Louise did find some help, from the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust, and is now fundraising for the charity.

She added: “I want to raise awareness. Nobody really talks about baby loss, and never about ectopic pregnancy. I was going through mine at the same time a friend was going through a miscarriage, so it is more common than people realise,” she added.