I see my girls playing and I imagine Theo out there with them. I wonder what he’d look like now... our precious baby boy
Star tells of the emotional agony of stillbirth
ACTRESS Amanda Holden often stands at the kitchen window watching her two daughters playing football outside. As Lexi, 12, and Hollie, six, race around the garden, their mum pictures a third team member with them.
A beautiful, dark haired Theo – the stillborn son that Amanda and her husband Chris Hughes lost in 2011.
“When the girls are playing footy I imagine Theo out there with them,” smiles the Britain’s Got Talent star.
“One of them is in goal, the other two racing around... and I wonder what he would look like now.
“He’d just be going into Year Three, so a bit taller than Hollie. And Chris was a really cute little boy so I think he would look like Daddy.”
Amanda, 47, pauses then sighs: “But, in truth, Theo will always be a baby in my mind. Our precious baby boy.”
She had miscarried a son at 16 weeks in 2010 and was seven months pregnant with Theo when a scan revealed his heart had stopped.
Distraught and unable to endure giving birth, she and Chris opted for a caesarean at West Middlesex University Hospital, where Amanda had undergone midwifery training for an ITV documentary called Out Of My Depth in 2009.
She had remained close pals with three of the midwives – Jackie Nash, Pippa Nightingale and Natalie Carter – who rushed to be with her.
Their care and support in the following months would convince Amanda that all parents of stillborn babies should be helped through their grief.
Which is why today, at the start of Baby Loss Awareness Week, the TV star has announced she is setting up a fund via baby charity Tommy’s to help provide special bereavement counsellors at all UK maternity units. It will be known as Theo’s Hope. Amanda says: “In the UK one in every 225 pregnancies ends in stillbirth – one of the highest rates in the developed world. Stillbirth is also about 10 times more common than cot death.
“It means more than 3,430 babies die every year, with half of the tragedies totally unexplained, as in Theo’s case.
“That leaves parents agonising about what went wrong and if it could happen again, leading to depression and other mental health issues.
“But fewer than half of maternity centres have midwives trained to help bereaved parents. We need to change that. My three amazing women got us through the worst time in our family’s life. Everyone deserves that level of support.”
Recalling Theo’s birth, Amanda says: “Pippa and Natalie were in theatre with Jackie, who had become a bereavement counsellor after losing her own daughter at 23 weeks. I wanted to be awake so I had an epidural. But I was absolutely terrified of holding him.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of holding a dead baby. I was scared what he’d look like. But the minute he came out, Jackie took him and said ‘He’s beautiful’. So I said: ‘Give him to me. I’m his mummy’.
“He had the most incredible eyebrows.” Amanda who is fighting back tears at the painful memory, adds: “And lots of thick dark hair. He was nearly 3lbs, so perfectly viable, and his little face and body were perfect. Chris and I just talked to him and my tears fell on his face.”
The hospital had a special room where record producer Chris and Amanda could spend time with their son, away from the upsetting cries of healthy newborns on the maternity unit. “We kept him overnight with us,” she says. “Jackie took a footprint and cut a lock of Theo’s hair for a memory box. She also took a photograph... all the things you’ll later treasure but aren’t in the right headspace to consider.
“We asked to keep the blanket that he was wrapped in, so we still have that too.
“And before we said goodbye we gave them a baby grow to put him in. It was so surreal. Someone explained we had to register our baby’s birth and also his death. We hadn’t even settled on a name and Chris couldn’t bear to think about it. So I chose Theo.
“We couldn’t face a funeral either. We didn’t want to put him in a tomb. So we decided Theo should be cremated and we held our own memorial service later.
“Then we had to go home to Lexi, who was five. I was agonising about that. But Jackie told me I had to be clear. So I compared it to Peter Pan.
“I said Theo’s heart had stopped and he wasn’t going to come and play now but hopefully, one day, she would have another little brother or sister.
“She just looked at me and said ‘Can I go and watch children’s TV now, Mummy?’ I was so relieved.”
But Amanda and Chris then shut themselves away as they came to terms with losing Theo.
“Chris was a real warrior,” she says. “We have an amazing relationship but, God, I loved him even more after the way he stood up and protected me.
“He was going through grief in his own
way and his stress later came out as shingles. For a while we didn’t want to see anyone except Jackie, Pippa and Natalie. I asked endless questions. Was it mercury in my fillings, something in the water, something I ate, the way I slept? They answered them all with tireless patience.”
A postmortem could find no cause for Theo’s death. Amanda says: “There was a tiny dent in one of the three arteries in the umbilical chord which could have cut his blood supply. It could never have been spotted. They couldn’t have saved him.”
We joined Amanda on a visit to Tommy’s Stillbirth Research Centre and Rainbow Clinic at Saint Mary’s Hospital, Manchester.
Experts led by Obstetrics Professor Alex Heazell are working to find the causes of stillbirth as well as supporting pregnant women who have had a previous loss.
Amanda met several families who had been helped to have healthy babies. And she wept as she heard them talk of a burning desire to have another baby. “I thought it was just me who felt like that,” she says. “I was desperate to fill the ache of my empty arms.
“At the same time I worried people would think I was shallow or I didn’t feel anything for my son because I needed to have another baby. Now I know it’s a perfectly natural reaction. Jackie, Pippa and Natalie all told me ‘Yes, you absolutely should try again’ and supported me through my pregnancy with Hollie.”
Amanda told in her 2013 autobiography how she came close to death after suffering huge blood loss having Hollie and spent three days in a coma.
SI was desperate to fill the ache of my empty arms.. now I know it’s a natural reaction AMANDA HOLDEN ON HOW MIDWIVES HELPED HER MOVE ON
he says: “But without access to bereavement counsellors, grieving women struggle to move on. Many will develop depression, putting pressure on our NHS, so stopping that seems a fairly simple fix.
“We hope to fund one full-time counsellor at Tommy’s Stillbirth Research Centre in Manchester and their work can be assessed to see what difference it made in reducing perinatal mental health issues. Then, hopefully, it can be rolled out across the NHS.”
Amanda is hoping to raise £100,000 to fund the initial stages of the trial.
“There is never a ‘cure’ for the pain of losing a baby but you can be healed in a way that lets you get on with life.” The star, who narrates a documentary about stillbirth called Child of Mine on Channel 4 on October 18 at 10pm, has certainly managed to get on with her life. And Theo is still a big part of it.
She says: “The memory box is in my office but I don’t need to look at it now. Theo is always here,” she gestures as if he is standing close to her right side.
“I dream about him and sometimes I speak to him. Lots of moments, symbols, make me think of Theo and connect me to him. But I don’t speak about them because I don’t want the magic to go.
“It’s weird... It almost feels as if he was never meant to be here. That’s how I’ve got my head round it.
“I feel honoured to be the person that carried him that far on his journey. I think perhaps he chose me because I was strong enough to handle it. He just didn’t need to continue his journey here.
“I think about him every day. And I look at Theo’s photograph. I keep it in another box with our marriage certificate and the children’s birth certificates as he’s still a part of our family.”
For further info on Theo’s Hope and how to donate please visit https://www.tommys.org/