In September 2020, I was pregnant with our daughter Lila when my waters broke prematurely. A few days later, Lila died during labour. Despite almost losing our older daughter Robyn the same way a few years earlier, I was totally unprepared for the overwhelming grief and anger I felt at Lila’s loss.
My partner and I struggled to navigate this new world we had found ourselves in. During this time, I reached out to the Sands Online Community and was met by a flood of empathetic replies from other parents who had lost their children. My partner and I decided to join one of the virtual bereavement support groups run by our local Sands group and we were amazed to learn that there was a couple just two streets away who had also just lost their son. We arranged to meet up outside of the group and this quickly turned into weekly walks in the woods.
When I went on to experience two further losses, my walks with my friend were a consistently safe space for me and I am thankful every day that we both attended that Sands support meeting. She has been my absolute rock over the past 3 years.
My professional background is in maternity research, and so work to save babies’ lives has always been important to me, and at the forefront of my mind. Before having children of my own, I worked on several projects related to saving babies’ lives, including a review of the investigations undertaken following baby deaths and supporting the roll-out of a standardised obstetric triage system. More recently, in my role as Associate Professor in Emergency Care at the University of the West of England (UWE) Bristol, I have led work into improving outcomes for babies born unexpectedly outside of hospital. This work has focused on improving the management of babies’ temperature, to reduce the risk of poor outcomes from hypothermia, and has already resulted in local and international changes to practice (both in ambulance services and during 999 calls).
As a bereaved mother and researcher, my relationship with Sands is special. Not only have they provided support to me and my family when we needed it the most, they have also played an important part in helping me to weave in parents’ voices throughout my research, which is something I am very passionate about and keen to continue in future. Giving parents an opportunity to share their experiences first-hand is vital. It helps for lessons to be learnt so that improvements can be made in maternity safety, best practice and as a result, babies’ lives saved.
Although I began working in maternity research before losing Lila, my own experience of loss now provides even more motivation to continue working to save babies’ lives and prevent parents from experiencing what we went through. My hopes for the future are to see more research being funded into pregnancy and neonatal loss and to ultimately reduce the number of babies who die each year.
