On the 25th August, at 38 weeks of pregnancy, we found out our little baby had died. She was born a few days later on 28th August. She was absolutely beautiful. Her name is Ness.

In the horror and sadness of the day we found out Ness had left us before we even got to meet her, we were given a beautiful room in the hospital. We met with a Support Midwife, who, along with many other hospital staff, sat with our grief and panic and horror and answered our questions and fears. She provided us with a Sands Bereavement Support Book which helped us so much over the next few days, and guided us to this important charity. When your baby dies, your world is upside down, your heart is broken, you are in complete shock and disbelief. You have to talk about induction and face birthing your baby, at the same time as making decisions about post-mortems, registering your baby's death, and making funeral arrangements. Sands provides information, practical and emotional, for this completely overwhelming time. We digested some of this information over the two days before giving birth to our beautiful Ness, and we truly believe it helped us have the calm and peaceful birth we wanted for our treasured baby, and allowed us to spend a precious day and night with her after her birth. The stories and information we read gave us the strength to introduce Ness to her wonderful big sister. We are now so grateful Selkie had this opportunity and we cherish the moment we saw our daughters together, even as our heart was breaking for them. The world you find yourselves in when you return home without your baby is overwhelming and scary at times, but every question we have had, there is an answer from Sands. Their website is where we looked for books to read to Selkie, to help her understand that her beautiful baby sister was not coming home. This gave us language to use with her, and although hard, we deeply value these conversations in which we remember Ness together. 

As well as support for the bereaved, a huge part of Sands' work is funding research into stillbirth. We do not know why Ness died. The pregnancy had been low risk and largely a very happy and carefree time. The hospital staff have prepared us that we may get more answers in time, or, more likely, we may not. We hope that with further research, the reasons for stillbirth will be better understood and fewer families will go through this. 

Thank you so much,

Love Ness, Annie, Dickie and Selkie xxx

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