We’ll always be
This week, people who’ve been touched by pregnancy and baby loss are uniting to light a candle, share their experiences and draw comfort in the knowledge that they are not alone.
Among those marking Baby Loss AwarenessWeek are Lauren and Antony Rossell, who were supported by Baby Loss Retreat – a Scottish charity that helped them heal after the heartbreaking loss of their daughter, Eva.
A loving couple, whose longedfor baby Eva was “born with wings,”take comfort in the belief that wherever she is, she knows she’s loved.
But, as her dad Antony Rossell concedes, it’s not the same as being able to tell her.
Lauren Rossell was 37-weeks pregnant when the last scan before her delivery date revealed the devastating reality that no parent ever wants to face. Her baby had no heartbeat.
Said Antony: “I crumbled. I hit the floor. I said: ‘Please tell me I didn’t hear that. It can’t be right.’”
Explaining how she and her husband were taken to a side room, Lauren said: “The doctor came in. She was very unfeeling. She just said: ‘I’m terribly sorry but we need to discuss what happens next.’ The two of us were in shock. She handed me some tablets with no explanation. I did what I was told and took them.”
Lauren – who has diabetes and had two previous miscarriages – learned that the medication would cause her to go into labour.
“I was sent home, carrying my baby,” she said. “We went to see my dad and told family and had time by ourselves to try to understand what was going on.”
By the evening, Lauren was back at Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, having fullblown contractions.
“They thought it wasn’t going to be long,” she explained. “The midwife was the most incredible woman I have ever met in my entire life. I could not have gone through it without her.”
When the doctor instructed that she be given morphine to slow the contractions, Lauren was not in a mental state to argue.
The medication brought everything to a halt. So, it was followed up the next morning with tablets that would ramp up the contractions.
“The doctor said: ‘You will deliver this baby,’” recalls Lauren. “My daughter was double-breach, bum first. If this was a living baby, there is no way they would put me through a natural birth. I asked repeatedly: ‘Why can’t I have a section?’ I was told that if I had a vaginal birth, it would be much easier for my next child. Another child was the last thing on my mind.”
After enduring three days of contractions, Lauren’s waters broke. She said: “I was in agony. I kept refusing to have an epidural. I wanted to experience this, because I wasn’t going to have anything else at the end of it. Eva started to come when I was 6cm dilated.”
Having eventually agreed to an epidural, Lauren again appealed for a caesarean section, but was turned down.
After the the couple confided in their midwife about their experiences and concerns, a consultant entered the room.
“She was my angel,” said Lauren. “She handed my husband scrubs and said: ‘Get changed. We’re going to surgery.’ She was phenomenal and couldn’t believe how we’d been spoken to.”
Lauren, whose baby girl was delivered on August 2, 2021, weighing 7lb 10oz, continued: “We had Eva, and she was beautiful. Because she had been left for so long without being in fluid, it was traumatic for us to see her. Her skin had started to deteriorate.”
The couple were given a SiMBA room, in which they had the opportunity to spend a precious day with Eva and prepare to say goodbye to her in a peaceful and private space.
That’s when a call came from an NHS employee who cheerfully advised Lauren that she was booked in for her planned C-section the next day.
Recalling how she had to explain to the caller her family’s devastating circumstances, Lauren said: “It was a horrendous phone call and a massive failing, but everyone is human and we all make mistakes. The woman on the phone burst into tears. The day I’d been booked in for a C-section was the day we handed our daughter to the morgue.”
Lauren, who contracted a serious infection and had to spend the following week in hospital, says their beautiful memory box from charity SiMBA helped get them through.
While Children’s Hospices Across
Scotland (CHAS) took Eva’s tiny hand and foot prints, their midwife told Lauren and Antony about Baby Loss Retreat – a charity founded in 2018 by Coatbridge couple Julie and Bryan Morrison, who experienced their own loss in July 2003 when the heart of their baby girl, Erin, stopped beating in the womb.
On the day of Lauren’s discharge, Antony received a call from Julie – someone the couple describe as “one of the most compassionate people they’ve ever known.”
Eva’s quiet funeral was held at Mortonhall Crematorium on August 28 after what Lauren describes as “the longest 26 days of my life.”
There were no eulogies, just a song list that included tracks to which Eva had danced in the womb. Family and friends arrived with flowers, and placed them on Eva’s coffin during the service.
At Lauren and Antony’s first meeting with Baby Loss Retreat, Julie listened to the Rossells’ story and booked the couple in for two nights at her charity’s lochside retreat near Castle Douglas.
“Until that point, we’d both been unable to cry,” said Lauren (33). “When we arrived at the retreat, there was a lovely tote bag on the bed containing a little packet of forget-me-not seeds, a candle with Eva’s name on it, Baby Loss Retreat pens and wrist bands, and a journal.
“I sat that night and wrote a few entries. Because we had filled in a little bit of that journal when we were sitting watching the sun come up, both of us burst into tears. We sat on that balcony for three hours, just sobbing.”
Lauren, of Edinburgh, continued: “When you are going through a loss, there is no support for the dad. We had a pile
of leaflets, but not one mentioned dads. People forget how dads who lose a child are affected. My husband hit the deck and crumbled in front of me.
“He hadn’t slept and had barely eaten in four days. He was sustaining himself on nicotine and coffee. At no point did anyone ask him if he wanted a drink of water.”
Bryan Morrison changed that by frequently messaging Antony and introducing him to support group, Dads Rock.
Lauren attended Baby Loss Retreat’s annual remembrance service, Wave of Light, at which the Morrisons handed out to families hand-decorated candles bearing the name of their lost little one.
Although thousands of families have been supported by them, the couple – who message the Rossells on Eva’s birthday and every Christmas – remember each parent’s story and each baby’s name. Lauren, who has made many friends through Baby Loss Retreat support group meetings, added: “It needs to be something people talk about.
“The charity gave you that quiet place in the retreat to sort your own thoughts out, but also a very public place where you can talk about your child and your experiences.
“It is just so open and free. It is so comforting to have Baby Loss Retreat there.”
Traumatised by their experience and the loss of Eva, the couple decided not to try again for another child. Then, Lauren received the unexpected news from her GP’s surgery that she was pregnant.
Although Lauren and Antony didn’t widely announce that they were expecting until she was 20 weeks’ pregnant, they decided in the early weeks to confide in Julie.
“It was not an easy pregnancy, made worse by anxiety,” said Lauren. “I was at the hospital every second week, concerned she was not moving properly. They were very good.
“They put a rainbow sticker on your notes to signify it’s your first baby after a loss, so you don’t have to go through the story a million times.”
Faye was born, six weeks prematurely, by C-section on February 17, 2023.
Like her sister, she was double-breach. She was blue and not breathing at birth.
A crash team waited to whisk her to high dependency.
And it was 10 hours later before her little girl, weighing just 5lbs 2oz, was placed on Lauren’s chest, looked directly up at her mum, and then fell back to sleep.
“Faye is so like her sister, especially when she was first born, but much fairer,” said Lauren. “Eva took Antony’s olive colouring, with chocolate brown hair.
“When I first saw Eva’s face, she was the spitting image of her dad – the furrowed brow, the pout, the broad shoulders. She would have been mischief.
“Faye is nosey. That’s the best description of her. She takes everything in. She’s a very happy little girl, but it’s bitter-sweet.
“Every time she hits a milestone, I’m so happy. But there’s a massive part of me that feels I was robbed of this with Eva, and I have to go into the bathroom and have a really good cry.
“I don’t want Faye’s life to be overshadowed by Eva.
“But it’s hard to find that balance of being really excited by the things Faye is achieving, and being heartbroken that Eva never will.”
Eva has a memorial at Lauren’s mum’s
graveside.
And when she visits it with Faye, she will always see her big sister’s name.
Dad Antony ( 45): “It would have been easier had Eva survived just a few minutes, even just to hear a breath or a gurgle. Wherever she is, she’ll know she is loved. But that’s not the same as being able to tell her.”
Allister Short, director of women’s and children’s services at NHS Lothian, said: “We offer our sincere condolences to Mrs Rossell and fully understand that the loss of a baby is tragic and distressing.
“We are unable to comment on individual cases, however we are committed to ensuring that care is provided sensitively and compassionately and that every family is supported throughout their time with us.
“We work with a number of organisations to offer support to bereaved parents once they leave our care.”
• Baby Loss Retreat hosts support groups on the last Monday of every month at Chris’ House in Wishaw and on the first Monday of every month at 50 Wellington Street in Glasgow.
For further information, visit www. babylossretreat.org.uk.