With love from Berty's mummy and daddy x

Let me firstly introduce you to Berty. Berty was born on the 25th July 2020 at 3:09am. He weighed 5lb, 5oz. and measured 52cm's between his head to his toes. He mostly looked like his Daddy with his ginger hair and finger toes, but he had my nose.

Berty was stillborn 5 weeks before his due date. Berty's death was completely unexpected as we had a somewhat easy pregnancy leading up to the night his heart stopped beating. One day we were planning our future around our baby; what we were going to name him, what nursery rhymes we would sing to him, what school we should send him to... then, without warning we are left planning a funeral instead. We are left thinking about what flowers are good enough to show how special he was, what we should do with his empty nursery and trying to understand what the hell just happened and whether we will ever be OK again. But we are not alone, in 2018 2,942 babies were stillborn after 24 weeks of pregnancy in the UK and roughly 60% of these were unexplained.

There are many other types of baby or pregnancy loss too. Some are more well-known than others, but they all have devastating effects and are more common than often believed. For example, miscarriage is estimated to effect 1 in 4 pregnancies and 1 in 80 pregnancies will be ectopic, there are also neo-natal death's, missed miscarriages, termination for medical reasons (TFMR), molar pregnancies, sudden infant death syndrome and many more names given to the various types of pregnancy or baby loss. Though these are all defined differently, one thing that remains constant is that everyone who has experienced a pregnancy or baby loss has lost a future with their child and they are grieving for that loss.

Despite the large number of people that have experienced a baby or pregnancy loss, it is regularly misrepresented in media or ignored completely. It is a taboo in our society, as most things are that involve death. This results in many feeling alone, confused, angry and scared to look for help.

Berty's Daddy and I are truly thankful to our friends and family who have really shown up since Berty died, wanting to show their support to us in any way they can. With their help we have been able to create 'With love from Berty' in his memory, where we hope to encourage people to show up for friends and family that have lost a much-wanted child and raise money for charities who fund support and research into baby loss (more on that coming soon!).

When someone loses a baby, it is hard to know what to say or if you should say anything at all. I hope that by sharing Berty's story and talking about mine and his Daddy's life after we might be able to share what has and has not helped, what more could have been done and what we hope for in the future.

Every person deals with grief and loss in a different way and I am speaking from my own experience. I have found that talking about Berty with others and hearing them use his name really helps me feel close to him, which is another reason I wanted to start this blog. But if you are here for advice then make sure you understand that what works for Berty's Daddy and I might not work for others facing the devastating death of their baby or loss of a pregnancy. However, there is an increasing number of people starting to talk about baby and pregnancy loss, more people are starting to share their stories or campaigning and fundraising for more research and support into baby and pregnancy loss. More people are starting to speak about the loss they had, last week, last year, 20 or even 60 years ago and many of them are saying the same thing, it's time to break the silence surrounding baby and pregnancy loss.

If you have never experienced a baby or pregnancy loss then it is hard to understand the ridiculous number of feelings, regrets and impossible wishes that come with it and there is not a lot that can help. There is no quick fix, every year takes us further away from the short time we had with Berty and each passing event just reminds us of what Berty will never have. But life goes on as it always does, no matter how bad something is the world keeps turning and keeping up with it is bloody hard work. So, if you are reading this and wanting to know how to help a friend on this journey start by accepting that you cannot make any of it better, your friend, family member of loved one is not suddenly going to be OK about their baby dying. But you can show up for them. You can offer practical and emotional support to help them to get through the day's, months, and years ahead, though it is important you don't force anything onto them. They are the professional in their own lives and know what is best for them and their grief. Just don't let that stop you from saying something. Say you are sorry for their loss, ask if there is anything you can do to support them and let them talk if they want to.

If we can all do that then we can hopefully make less people feel so alone after the loss of a pregnancy or baby.

Subscribe if you would like to know more about Berty's story and life after baby loss. We also hope to soon be announcing our first fundraising adventure where we have gotten creative! If you want to find out what we have got planned follow us on Instagram. We hope you like it as much as we do.

With love from Berty's mummy and daddy xxx