In the UK, it is estimated that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss during pregnancy or birth. Ahead of Baby Loss Awareness Week, which begins this Friday 9th October, Conservative MP for Truro and Falmouth, Cherilyn Mackrory, recounts the traumatic experience of losing her baby and how it inspired her to help those going through the same situation.
“I can see straight away, something isn’t right”.
These are the words that broke my heart and changed my life forever.
My husband and I were at the 20-week scan for our second baby.
My first pregnancy had been healthy and straight forward and resulted in our fabulous daughter. At aged 42, I had been slightly anxious about my 12-week scan, but all tests had happily come back clear.
My midwife encouraged me to birth again at our midwife led centre, and I was keen to stay healthy in order to do just that.
We had celebrated (a sober) Christmas and New Year with family and friends, and I was content and reassured by my kicking baby.
Three days later, we went for our routine 20-week scan, where we received the terrible news from the sonographer that our baby had an extremely severe form of spina bifida.
Just over an hour later, we were sitting in an office at our main hospital in Truro with the consultant and a bereavement midwife.
I was checked again, and any hope we had was extinguished by a slow and silent shake of the head.
So started the most traumatic weekend of my life to date.
We were talked through ‘the process’ and given lots of time kindness by all the NHS staff we encountered that weekend. I signed a form to consent to the termination of my baby’s life and endured the procedure.
Two days later I was induced and delivered a tiny fair haired, beautiful, sleeping girl – I held her, kissed her, told her how much she was loved. Then I let her go.
Baby loss happens more often than I ever realised before it happened to my family and many people, maybe including some you know well, will be bearing the weight of this grief, often silently.
That is why Baby Loss Awareness Week is such an important time to raise the profile of this tragic yet relatively common experience.
Pregnancy and childbirth have always been perilous for women and even now, in 2020, with all our medical advances, there are so many babies we simply cannot save – early miscarriage stillbirth and the death of a new-born are all too common.
Having another child meant that a daily routine had to continue, thankfully.
In the time after my experience, my husband and I were alarmed to find that 50% of couples who experience baby loss split up.
We were determined to not be one of them. We vowed to let each other grieve at our own individual pace and not expect too much. We allowed family and good friends to help us together and separately.
During the worst days of my grief, I thought I would never recover. I just wanted to bring my baby girl home and for everything to be as it should be. But then, from somewhere inside me, a small flame started to flicker.
Slowly, this flame took hold and a new energy started to power me forward. I wanted to help other people in our situation.
Not only that, I wanted to be part of something that would help prevent this happening to other families.
By the end of the same year, I found myself taking the oath as the new MP for Truro & Falmouth and now I co-chair the All Party Parliamentary Group for Baby Loss alongside the former Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt.
I now have a real opportunity to help people facing the same experience and I am determined to make a genuine difference.
I believe, despite the advances of recent years, that as a society, we should do better in this area, and truly I believe that we can.
It starts with talking about baby loss and, more importantly, listening to each other’s’ experiences.
