Special rooms for families dealing with baby deaths

● Parents lead drive to give support to bereaved

Bereaved parents have led a fundraising drive to create new maternity unit family rooms to help people coping with the death of a baby.

Former Celtic and Scotland player Kris Commons and partner Lisa Hague opened the facility at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley as they campaign to increase support for parents after their daughter was stillborn in 2008.

The family and quiet rooms have been designed to provide an area for parents who are experiencing bereavement to stay from induction to delivery and for postnatal care.

Families can use the area to spend time with their baby or to return to the hospital to see their child’s name in the book of remembrance.

Local families affected by baby death raised over £30,000 to support the SIMBA charity project.

Sara Fitzsimmons, executive director of the chrity, said: “I have been a practising midwife for 22 years working for 21 of those in the NHS.

“Working with a strong team is vital to the success of any project, every member of the team pulled together knowing how vitally important rooms such as these can be.

“The difference that family rooms can make to a parents experience within the hospital is incredible, allowing precious time together that isn’t rushed.

“These rooms at the Royal Alexandra Hospital have been created with passion, using the experiences and suggestions from bereaved families and staff and I am so very proud to be able to unveil them to some of the families who have fund raised so hard to support this project today.”

The Lola Commons Fund for SIMBA was founded in 2013 to support bereaved families across the country with family rooms and is supporting the refurbishment of facilities in Glasgow, Edinburgh and the Borders.

Ms Hague, who has spoken about her experience in a BBC documentary, said: “These rooms have exceeded my expectations, Kris and I have been involved from the beginning so we shouldn’t have been surprised but I can only say they are breath taking, so tranquil.

“When we were speaking to other members of hospital staff they were telling us how proud they were of the rooms and that made us feel incredibly proud.”

The issue of baby death has also been highlighted by Gary Barlow in his new autobiography.