LONDON -- News of a miscarriage suffered by the wife of former British prime minister Tony Blair was used to stave off speculation of an early invasion of Iraq, she said in comments printed in newspapers Monday.

Cherie Blair said that as she lay in pain and bleeding back in 2002, Blair and his communications chief Alastair Campbell told her they were going public immediately so that a delay in their family holiday did not trigger false speculation of an invasion.

The high-profile lawyer, in excerpts from her autobiography serialized in The Times and The Sun, said she could not believe the way the news was handled.

She also said that their son Leo, eight later this month and by far the youngest of their four children, was conceived while the couple was staying with Queen Elizabeth II.

When she discovered she was pregnant again in 2002 at the age of 47, Cherie Blair was "astonished."

"Leo's birth has seemed like a miracle and here I was nearly three years older," she said.

"Although the idea was daunting to say the least I realized it would be nice for Leo not to be what amounted to an only child," she said.

The prime minister's reaction was recorded as: "I'm not sure I want to be a father at 50."

Only their children and Leo's nanny were told.

"Unusually for me, I wasn't feeling at all well. It was going to be a hard pregnancy, I realized, and I was feeling grim most of the time," she said.

During a routine scan, the radiographer told her: “There's no heartbeat, Mrs. Blair. I'm afraid the baby's dead.’”

She said the press announcement was made for political reasons.

The Blairs had been planning to go on holiday in France. When she told her husband, he told family members, then Campbell.

Tony Blair and Campbell then called Cherie to tell her there were implications in not going on holiday.

There had been talk of troops being sent into Iraq and if the Blairs did not go on holiday it might send out the wrong signals that something was about to happen.

The pair had decided, therefore, to tell the media about her miscarriage.

"I couldn't believe it. There I was, bleeding, and they were talking about what was going to be the line to the press. I put down the receiver and lay there staring at the ceiling as pain began to grip."

Blair said she was overwhelmed by the sense of loss.

She also revealed the circumstances leading to Leo being conceived.

Every September, the prime minister stays with the monarch at her Balmoral summer residence in the Scottish countryside.

"The first year we had actually stayed -- in 1998 -- I had been extremely disconcerted to discover that everything of mine had been unpacked," Blair said.

"Not only my clothes, but the entire contents of my distinctly ancient toilet bag with its range of unmentionables.

"This year I had been a little more circumspect, and had not packed my contraceptive equipment out of sheer embarrassment.

"As usual up there, it had been bitterly cold, and what with one thing and another... But then I thought, I can't be, I'm too old. It must be the menopause."