When the TV presenter and actress Nadia Sawalha and her husband decided, late last year, that the time was right to try for a brother or sister for their daughter Maddie, they didn't expect any problems.Sure enough, despite being 41, Nadia conceived as quickly as she had done before, and she joyfully announced the news to friends and family. But 11 weeks into her pregnancy Nadia suffered a miscarriage.
She conceived again, then last month, at six weeks' gestation, she had a second miscarriage. 'The emotional pain is incredible,' she says. 'It is pure grief.' Naturally, she turned to her family for support ? her sister Dina lives next door with her sons, aged seven and 16, while Nadia's parents live in a flat attached to her house.
It is an intensely close family. 'One minute I'm rowing with my sisters, and the next we're laughing and cuddling,' she says. But no one was surprised when, after her miscarriages, Nadia contacted her homeopath.
For more than 20 years the whole Sawalha family ? including Nadia's father, actor Nadim, and her sister, actress Julia, have consulted homeopath Rachel Packer.
'We're all ardent believers in the power of homeopathy,' says Nadia. 'None of us has ever taken our children to a conventional doctor or given them the normal childhood vaccinations.'
'Rachel has seen me through every stage of my life,' she adds. 'I went to her when severe eczema provoked the worst health crisis of my life and I had to stop working. I had regular consultations with her when I was pregnant and even during labour. And now she has helped me to deal with the terrible sadness I felt after the miscarriages.'
Homeopathy is based on the theory that gently provoking the symptoms of illness triggers the body's natural healing processes.
There has been much controversy recently about it, with some critics using the lack of evidence that it works to condemn NHS funding for the treatment. But the Sawalha family have no doubts about its worth.
However, Nadia admits that the first time she consulted Rachel she was sceptical. NADIA'S Dina, Rachel an old whose acne had been life transformed, by At the time, Nadia, older sister now 43, introduced the family to after she met schoolfriend 'cured', and homeopathy.
She had been suffering from bad headaches. 'The homeopathic remedy Rachel gave me made me feel really ill. I rang her every day to tell her this, and she'd just say, "Yes, yes". I wondered if she was a nutter. Then after a few days the headaches suddenly went, and I've never had them again.
'Rachel says being a homeopath is like being a detective: she has to put all the clues together to make up a suitable treatment. She wants to know all sorts of details, from how your love life is going, to your work and how you are sleeping and eating. It's a full physical, mental and emotional history.'
Nadia has had homeopathic treatment for cystitis, and when she was pregnant with Maddie, now three, she increased the consultations from every two to three months to every three weeks. 'During my pregnancy I felt the best I ever have.'
She also credits homeopathy with speeding up her labour.
'I'd wanted a drug-free labour and so insisted on a water birth at home. It was very hard ? it went on for two-and-a-half days. When they broke my waters. I screamed so loudly that Dina, who was my birthing partner with my husband, Mark Adderley, left the house.
'Even my midwife, who was into natural births, asked if I wouldn't prefer to go to hospital. Then the homeopath prescribed caulophyl-lum, which opens up the cervix, and I finally gave birth.'
Nadia made her name in the Nineties as the feisty Annie Palmer in EastEnders, but has since carved out a career as a TV presenter.
She met her husband when he was directing her dating show Perfect Partner. She also fronts the BBC's hospital documentary, City Hospital, as well as travel programmes.
During filming in Ibiza in 2003, she first developed severe eczema on her hands. 'My homeopath prescribed one of her remedies, but then went away on holiday. My hands became so itchy I would scratch them until they bled. I rubbed them on the floor, the walls ? anywhere to get temporary relief from the itching.'
Her hands became infected and, in desperation, she went to casualty.
'The doctor took one look and gasped: "Oh my God". He gave me hydrocortisone cream, which did nothing, and antibiotics, which brought me out in a horrendous rash all over my body. I was told I would need to go to my GP regularly to have my hands bandaged.'
Nadia then saw her homeopath.
'She encouraged me to really talk about my feelings and it all poured out. How hard it was to have a baby and be rushing around with work. How I wanted to be the best possible mother I could, but felt a failure when I gave up on breast-feeding. I was thoroughly stressed and unhappy.'
Homeopathic treatment often requires one or two different remedies to be tried before the problem is sorted out. While the earlier remedy had little effect, within four days of taking the new remedy ? mezereum? the wounds on her hands healed.
However, a year later the eczema returned on her face. 'I looked as if I had no eyes and my face was enormous and shapeless. It turned purple, with weeping sores.' She was filming for the series Passport To The Sun, but it had to be abandoned.
Back home, she could hardly move her mouth, but after homeopathic treatment with ignatia the swelling went down and she was able to return to Spain for filming.
Her daughter Maddie has also had homeopathic treatment for chest infections. And when Nadia miscarried, Rachel prescribed a remedy to help her through the pain of her loss.
'It works in two ways,' explains Nadia. 'If you are in such a state that you can't cry, it helps you to release your emotions. But if you are crying unbearably, it will help you feel calmer. What it did for me was to balance my feelings and enable me to cope.'
However, Nadia is realistic about homeopathy's powers. Her two great struggles, she says, have been with her smoking and her weight.
'I finally gave up smoking in August ? I just stopped. There will always be a place in my heart for cigarettes, but the incentive was not wanting Maddie to sit by my bedside as I suffered a smoking-related illness.
'I also felt ashamed, after seeing people on City Hospital with conditions which weren't self-inflicted, that I was putting my health at risk.'
She believes homeopathy can help with weight problems.
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