Browns overcome tragedy to help save Smith’s grandchild
Laboratory set up by ex-PM and wife keeps premature baby alive
GORDON and Sarah Brown have told how the tragic death of their baby daughter 15 years ago helped save the life of the grandchild of former Labour leader John Smith.
The former prime minister and his wife helped set up a research laboratory in Edinburgh after their premature daughter Jennifer died aged just 10 days old in 2002.
Mr Smith’s daughter, Catherine, 43, revealed work carried out at the laboratory “impacted directly” on the care given to her daughter Ella McConnachie and “improved her chance of survival” after she was born at 28 weeks weighing just 1lb 10oz. She is now aged two.
The former Labour leader described Catherine’s father as “my friend, my colleague, my mentor”, saying that even 23 years after his death the politician is still “sorely missed”.
Fifteen years after Jennifer’s death, he said he and his wife are “so proud” to see what has been achieved by staff at the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory (JBRL) at the University of Edinburgh.
He said: “Sarah and I never had the joy of experiencing Jennifer taking her first steps, or speaking her first words, or going to school for the first time.
“But we have realised that after 15 years, out of tragedy some good can come.”
Mrs Brown said: “It’s extraordinarily important to know that Ella has survived and thrived, she is an amazing, bouncy fully healthy little girl.
“That’s what you want every baby to have the opportunity to be.”
She added: “There is nothing worse than to lose a child, but to know that she is part of our family, she is in our heart, we have the same love for her that we always will have, that won’t change. Any mother who has lost a child will share that experience.
“But we have our amazing two sons, we’re a brilliant family, and Jennifer is in there and part of it even though she is not with us.”
Mrs Brown set up the charity PiggyBankKids – now called Theirworld – which established the laboratory in 2004 to look at ways to help premature babies thrive,
‘‘ Sarah and I never had the joy of experiencing Jennifer taking her first steps, or speaking her first words
including research into how much oxygen should be given in incubators.
Ms Smith said: “I knew Gordon and Sarah at the time their daughter died. It was a very upsetting experience for everyone that knew them, it was just awful.”
She contributed to the fundraising effort which led to the laboratory being established, but said at the time she “didn’t know in any detail about the work that they did”.
Ms Smith, from Dundee, had an emergency Caesarean after developing HELLP syndrome, an aggres- sive form of pre-eclampsia.
While her baby was being cared for, she said: “There came a point when Ella was in hospital that I realised Sarah and Gordon must have been in a ward similar to the one I was in and suddenly their experience came to life. I felt I was able to understand better just the total horror of it.”
She went online to make a contribution to the laboratory’s work, and started reading about the “extraordinary” research it has done.
Ms Smith said: “I realised some of the research they had done into the oxygen levels being given to premature babies had in fact impacted directly on Ella’s care and had changed the way doctors treat these small babies and improved her chances of survival.”
She recalled that when her