Losing my baby daughter nearly cost my marriage
In her own courageous and heart-wrenching words, Broadchurch actress Sarah Parish tells how...
EVERY year, on my daughter El l a - J a y n e ’s birthday, I write her a special card, just like any other parent. Unlike other parents, I then place it in a drawer along with the other ones from past years that she’ll never get to read. It’s a ritual I have been through since we lost our darling girl – a way for me to mark the day she came i nto our lives. Eight months later, my husband and I mark another annual ritual: the day she was taken from us in January 2009. When that day comes round, we just stay indoors with our memories.
Unlike the cards tucked up in their drawer, there are plenty of those out on display – there are photographs of her around the house that bear tribute to the short but precious time we had with her. We got to enjoy Ella-Jayne for eight months and, however deep our grief, we have to remember that those months are more than some parents get before they lose a child.
When you lose a child, you are in such a desperate place you cling on to hope, and you cling on to optimism. When my husband, the actor James Murray, and I lost EllaJayne, we tried to do both. But such an incredible loss inevitably puts an enormous strain on a relationship because people grieve in different ways.
It would take the most emotionally mature people to be able to cope in that situation, and to comfort one another in the correct way.
I can only say now, eight years later, that I’m not sure we were able to do that at the time.
We have made mistakes and done things that don’t work for each other – and you either end up together, or you don’t. I think if we hadn’t created a charity, the Murray Parish Trust, in memory of our daughter, then things wouldn’t have worked out so well for us.
It has given us something to focus on and it has most definitely been good for our relationship.
I hope that by speaking out now, I may help other couples who find themselves in that same sad position, and that something positive might come out of something so tragic.
I’d got pregnant at the age of 38 and we were looking forward to being parents. Ella-Jayne was born by emergency caesarean section, five weeks premature, and diagnosed with a rare condition called Rubinstein-Taybi, which increases the risk of heart defects. The condition, which only affects one in 125,000-300,000 births, caused a large hole in her tiny heart and a defective heart valve.
Immediately after her birth, I was in so much pain all I can remember is her making a brief noise before there was silence, and then the sound of the doctors fighting to save her. When I finally saw her the next day, she looked almost too perfect – with masses of thick black hair and a tiny, doll-like face. She could have died at any time, but she battled on for months, surviving two bouts of serious, life-saving heart surgery, and spending her last four months at our Hampshire home. The doctors gave us that time – a Christmas with her. I will always be grateful for that.
Though she was very, very poorly, we never gave up hope, that longing for a miracle. The day she died she took a bottle for the first time; she held our gaze and smiled into our eyes. For Jim and I, it was very, very difficult. It left a huge hole in our lives. I now know that losing a child is the hardest thing to happen to anyone; that we had never experienced tragedy before she died. We had never truly understood grief or loss.
Statistics show that 75 per cent of couples who lose a child end up separating. I can see why. Because when you lose a child, it’s a 50:50 loss. Perhaps that’s the wrong way of putting it – what I mean is that you both suffer that loss equally, but separately at the same time. It is very difficult to comfort each other because you are enveloped in your own sadness.
I had support from my friends. But at home, Jim and I did things that didn’t work for each other. The pressure of grief is such that either you end up separating or, miraculously, you don’t. Jim and I have remained together despite some terrible, terrible times. We have our problems like any other couple. But we made some decisions which ultimately helped bring us through to the other side intact.
After Ella’s death, we went to Cambodia and Vietnam to do voluntary work in orphanages. It was either that or drink ourselves to death in the pub. And – harsh though it might sound – we needed to escape the sympathy that envel-
The day she died she held our gaze and smiled into our eyes
oped us in Britain. It’s very easy to think you’re the only people in the world to lose a child, but the two months we spent in orphanages gave us perspective.
Creating a charity in Ella-Jayne’s memory also helped us both. Initially, we raised money for Southampton’s Paediatric Intensive Care Unit where doctors performed miracles in the battle to keep our little girl alive. Then, in 2014, we set up the Murray-Parish Trust to formalise our fundraising – the aim now is to establish a children’s specialist emergency and trauma department at University Hospital Southampton, which will serve children across nine counties in the south of England and offer facilities comparable to Great Ormond Street.
Astonishingly, we’ve now found ourselves in the position of trying to raise £2million, which will be matched by the Government after a pledge by former Chancellor George Osborne. The project was one of three chosen by him to receive matched funding in his Spring Budget last year.
That success came quite by chance. We were hosting a street party for children in November 2014 and came up with the idea of lobbying the Chancellor. It was discussed as a bit of a joke, but we talked to our local MP Steve Brine who got the wheels rolling. We’re a small charity but we’re nearly a quarter of the way there now.
Doing these things has helped bring Jim and I closer together. Certainly it has brought a positive out of a negative.
We’ve also come into contact with people we wouldn’t normally have met, couples who’ve also lost children. We’ve heard about the horrors they’ve gone through too. I hope that Jim and I have helped people to see that something positive can come out of something tragic. Everybody has their own story and their own journey. For us, in some ways, it was brief. Ella-Jayne was very, very ill when she was born and she only lived for eight months. But some people lose a child at 16. It must be incredibly difficult to see them growing up, knowing that at some point they will die prematurely. Such deaths are still more common than people think. Go back 100 years and children died all the time. Nowadays we have modern medicine which makes it less likely. But you just can’t save everyone. For all that we have been through, Jim and I still consider ourselves blessed. We are both immensely proud of our other daughter, Nell, now aged seven. She was born just ten months after we lost Ella-Jayne, so her birth could have been bittersweet but she’s the light of our lives and we are loving watching her grow up. We told her about her sister and she understands she had a poorly heart and died. She doesn’t cry but she is not emotionally mature enough to feel it properly yet.
LAST weekend, we opened the expansion of the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit in Southampton – a project we helped the Friends of PICU fund-raise for, and which gives the unit an extra two beds and lifesaving equipment.
We took Nell to see the bed EllaJayne had been in – she was more interested in the bright colours. I’ve been back to the ward a number of times now. It’s always tough, but because we’ve now been able to help the unit so positively it doesn’t really feel in any way sad now.
And of course, I have my work to distract me. You’ve got to keep working, there are still bills to pay. I’m filming the new series of BBC’s satirical drama W1A at the moment and then moving up to Manchester for ten weeks to film a new show. Last year I filmed series three of Broadchurch with David Tennant, which was a real pleasure.
The next step for the charity is the Ginormous Teddy Bears Picnic for kids across the country on June 5. It’ll be lovely day and there will be a special all-star version of the teddy bears picnic song to sing along to, with some very special guests. After that we’re planning a pop festival in Hampshire and then, at Christmas, there will be a carol concert at Winchester Cathedral, which we’re sharing with breast cancer charity The Haven.
Helping other people like this has given us a feeling of lightness and optimism; the sense that it is not all horrific.
Obviously we will never recover from Ella-Jayne’s death but I feel that knowing her was such a privilege. She’ll have a great legacy.
For more information on the Ginormous Teddy Bears’ picnic, visit teddybearspicnic.org.uk.