Our beautiful daughter, Cora Annelies Kathleen Baneke, was born without a heartbeat at 6.28am on 23 December 2020.

We received fantastic care from the staff at St Thomas' Hospital during labour but one crucial aspect in the immediate aftermath of the loss of Cora was the availability of a cooling cot. These refrigerated cots allow bereaved parents to spend time with their baby in hospital as a family. Until a few years ago, this was not possible and Cora would have been taken away just a couple of hours after birth. By the time Sarah came round from the general anaesthetic after her emergency c-section, we would have had just half an hour together as a family. Instead, because of the availability of cooling cots, Cora stayed by our side until we felt able to say goodbye to her.

We are still in the very early days of grieving for our daughter but it was clear to us almost immediately the enormous comfort of being with Cora and that the lack of access to a cooling cot would have meant suffering the additional trauma of not being able to spend time with our baby.

Abigail's Footsteps is the charity responsible for developing the concept of cooling cots and has already done some incredible work, with the support of other bereaved parents, in funding and distributing cooling cots to hospitals across the country. Each cot costs £2,200 and a longer term aim of ours is to try to ensure that every hospital in the UK has at least one cooling cot. We also, in due course, would like to fundraise in Cora's memory for other charities, in particular Tommy's, Petals and SANDS.

For now, in these early days and whilst Covid prevents any fundraising events, we will see how many cooling cots we can raise the money to fund. On the side of each cot will be a plaque dedicated to our beautiful daughter, Cora.

Thank you

Sam and Sarah x