The Luca Foundation (soon to be a Registered Charity)

The Luca Foundation has been set up in memory of Luca, who was born sleeping in June 2012. Its original mission was to provide a cold cuddle cot for every maternity unit in the UK, (there are 157 NHS Trusts with a number of units at present), to allow bereaved families more time to say goodbye to their angel babies. The cost of each cuddle cot is £1,570.00. We are finding, however, that where hospitals already have one or more cots in place in their units, they are requesting funding for towards other aspects of Baby Loss.

“Our first child, our son Luca, was stillborn June 2012. A parent’s worst nightmare is to lose their child. We were beyond devastated, our world had fallen apart. From the moment he died on the Monday inside my womb, on the first day of my maternity leave, to the Thursday when I gave birth to him naturally, everything was a daze. He was perfect. There was nothing wrong him nor me.

We were not ready for the next blow….the limited time we had to hand him over knowing that we would never see him again. Luca stayed with us overnight in a family room, however the next morning we were told we did not have long left with him as his little body was deteriorating. After holding on to Luca as long as we could, we had to hand him over to be taken to the mortuary. This broke us even more and caused such trauma as we cried uncontrollably knowing we would never see him again.

Had we had a cold cuddle cot, we could have stayed with Luca for up to two more days. This would have meant that we could have taken him home and allowed his grandparents to hold him. We would have had time to think a little clearer and I would have taken photos of him in my arms. These are the regrets we now live with.

We need your help to enable us to donate a cold cuddle cot to each maternity unit in need of one across the UK, and to fund valuable support for maternity health professionals to help prevent stillbirth. It is a very sad fact that an average of 15 babies die every day within their first four weeks of life, and whilst working to reduce the number of baby deaths, we also want to ensure that measures are in place for families suffering from baby loss so that they are given much needed support and precious time with their angel baby.

Thank you for reading this and we hope you can help our cause.

God bless and best wishes, Sharon & Jas xx”