YOURHEALT Peopl stop t after lost fiv babies but w could
IN 2011, TV presenter Amanda Holden, 47, had a stillborn son Theo. But the care and support she received from expert midwives helped her and husband Chris to heal, and have another baby. Now Amanda is launching Theo’s Trust to help provide bereavement counsellors at all UK maternity units. She recently met other parents who have suffered stillbirths, including Clare and Rob Davies from Manchester. Here they tell their own heart-rending story. By Rachael Bletchly CAMPAIGN
When Clare and Rob Davies had their beautiful daughter, Eva, they thought their dreams were finally coming true. A year earlier their world had fallen apart when their first baby, Emma, was stillborn at 23 weeks.
But Eva’s birth in 2010 filled them with joy and hope that they could have more children.
“Her arrival reset everything and we could get on with our lives,” says Clare, 40. “Then, 18 months later I got pregnant again. We were so happy and confident, because lightning couldn’t strike twice, could it?
“We couldn’t have been more wrong.” For Clare and Rob, from Northenden, Greater Manchester, lost that baby too – a daughter, Faith, at 27 weeks.
Then a son, Bobby, was stillborn at 25 weeks.
And, in another agonising blow, the couple lost twin girls, Isla and Georgie, after 18 weeks of pregnancy.
But, as doctors could find no reason why their five precious babies had died, Clare and Rob felt driven to keep trying to fill the void they left.
“The pain and heartache was allconsuming,” says Clare, a trained nurse. “I felt guilt and anger too. Was it my fault? Why us? I became ‘the woman who has dead babies’ and couldn’t bear to see others pregnant.
“Even with friends who were expecting or had babies I felt like the leper in the room.
“Some people told us ‘enough is enough’ and we should stop trying as we were lucky to have one daughter. But the need to fill my empty arms was overwhelming.
“And why the hell shouldn’t we be like other families?”
Clare goes on: “I’d get pregnant and think ‘This time, surely? But then the baby would die inside me and I’d have to go through the hell of labour and giving birth. Then we’d look at our helpless dead baby and think ‘What a waste of a life.’
“I wondered if I was selfish or a bit sick, to be creating them when I couldn’t keep them alive.
“Then Rob and I would come home with a baby’s footprint on a piece of paper, not a child cradled in our arms.”
Clare sighs: “When we named Eva I had no idea that it meant ‘the living one’.
“In the eight long years that followed it felt as if fate was saying she’d be our ONLY living one.”
Yet, six months ago, Clare and Rob’s impossible dream really did come true – when they had a beautiful, healthy daughter, Lyla.
It was all thanks to the expert medical care and emotional support of Tommy’s Stillbirth Research Centre at St Mary’s Hospital, Manchester.
Its clinical director, Professor Alex Heazell, reviewed Clare’s history and disco place
He beco inflam imm
An Augu HEARTACHE Emma, Faith and Bobby’s precious