Bereaved Parents Remember Lost Children Across the Nation

RICCARDO M. GHIA – 20/10/2010

BEREAVED PARENTS REMEMBER LOST CHILDREN ACROSS THE NATION

LONDON – Julia Bueno will never forget the coldness of a gynaecologist who announced that she lost her child two years ago.

Bueno, a 38-year-old psychotherapist, was nine weeks pregnant.

“There is no heartbeat,” the gynaecologist said, looking at the scan. “I’m gonna get another doctor.”

The gynaecologist walked out of the room, leaving Bueno in tears with her legs still wide apart in stirrups.

“She didn’t look at me once in the eyes and say ‘I’m sorry’,” Bueno remembers as she stares at Johan, her lively one-year-old baby, playing in a sandbox.

Bueno is one of several thousand bereaved parents who remembered their lost children during National Baby Loss Awareness Day last Friday.

Activists across the United Kingdom initiated this annual event eight years ago to train medical personnel in dealing with bereaved parents, advocate greater research funding, and shatter the silence surrounding the aftermath of pregnancy loss.

Parents and volunteers sold thousands of hand-made blue and pink ribbons to raise funds for five charities: Antenatal Results and Choices (ARC), the Babyloss fund, Ectopic Pregnancy Trust, Miscarriage Association, and Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society (Sands).

Some parents found more creative ways to raise money.

Matthew McSevney, 36, from Port Erin, Isle of Man, rode his bike for almost 900 miles across the nation in memory of his stillborn twins, Stan and Lee. His children died last March. He attracted the attention of the media and the sympathy of donors in his hometown, raising £7,500 for Sands.

“We want to help Sands change the law,” says Rebecca McSevney, Matthew’s wife. “Every father and mother should have the right to see and hold their lost baby.”

In London, about 80 people gathered at a small ceremony at the café in Homerton Hospital.

“It was very moving to see how each year families come to remember the brief life of those who...