Baby Loss Awareness Week

Debate between Angela Richardson and Nickie Aiken

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Angela Richardson (Guildford) (Con)]

What an honour it is to follow my good friend, the Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland). I pay tribute to him for his openness and honesty today. I think we need more of that in this House. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) for securing the debate and bravely sharing again her story about Lily, and for her tireless work on the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss. Sometimes we end up in these things, but it is what we make of them that counts. In her speech, and in her answers to interventions, it was clear that she really knows her stuff. So I commend her. I also thank my constituents who wrote to me last year after my contribution to the debate and this year asking me to be here today.

This is an opportunity for us to talk about our shared humanity and our shared stories right across the whole Chamber. It is something that affects us all. I have always found that being open in discussing a sensitive subject is a good thing. It encourages others to open up and talk about things. However, as I was preparing for the debate today, I knew why I do not talk about these things sometimes. There is a real physical reaction to bringing those memories back to the forefront of your mind. Your eyes prick with tears, it becomes difficult to swallow and you wonder if you are going to be able to get the words out and speak. We have seen, in contributions across the Chamber, that we are all in that position. Even as I was writing my speech today and writing notes, I could feel that physical reaction to things that happened a long, long time ago.

As I was looking up statistics, as we do in this place, I realised that I am a statistic on a piece of paper—quite an awkward thing to be sometimes. I want to focus my comments on the mental health side of baby loss. On stillbirth and mental health, Tommy’s, a great charity and resource, has stated that women who have suffered stillbirth or neonatal death are more likely to have anxiety and depression afterwards. One study in the US of 800 women showed that women who had stillbirth were twice as likely to have depression, compared with those who had live births. That effect had actually increased when they were studied again two years later, showing that stillbirth has a long-term effect on mental health. Another study of 609 women who had experienced stillbirth or neonatal death showed that women who had loss were four times more likely to have depression and seven times more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder. In my speech last year, I talked about flashbacks. They catch you by surprise and come at the most unexpected times. Something will trigger one, bringing those physical sensations right to the forefront.

I wanted to talk a little about my story. I have schoolfriends who had to give birth to babies who no longer had a heartbeat and, on the anniversary each year, watch the photos go up on Facebook. It is wonderful that they are able to celebrate—that is probably the wrong word—to recognise that child and that their friends share that with them, even though it is very difficult to look at those photos. I had a very good schoolfriend who, like my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth, at 20 weeks found out in a scan that the amniotic fluid was disappearing and that her baby was being crushed slowly in the womb. She had to make the decision to terminate the pregnancy because the baby would never have survived. Because she was such a good friend, I lived that with her.

Last year, I talked about the three miscarriages I had in a row. Life was wonderful and fine and we managed to have our first child. I am one of those people who is very lucky in that I am incredibly fertile—I am sure my husband wishes I was not quite so fertile—and we were able to fall pregnant very easily. I talked about the fact that we had contracted a horrible SARS-like illness back in 2003 and that, in the following year, I had three back-to-back miscarriages. I think it says something about my character that I was so driven to have another baby that I would have a miscarriage and then two weeks later in the cycle I would ovulate and fall pregnant. That happened three times in a row, so I suffered the loss of a baby and then was pregnant again two weeks later. That happened three times. When we fell pregnant with our second child—he was my rainbow baby—I had been pregnant for 18 months. I think there were a lot of missed opportunities to pick up on the fact that I was having mental health problems, both perinatal and postnatal. Towards the latter stages of my pregnancy with him, I was absolutely desperate to give birth. I almost could not cope with being pregnant any more. It was very difficult looking after a toddler as well.

After I gave birth the second time, the same thing happened to me as the first time: I had retained placenta, I haemorrhaged and I had to be returned to hospital to have blood transfusions and IV antibiotics. The first time, I had my baby with me; the second time I didn’t have my baby with me, because I couldn’t—I just had to get better, and I needed to leave him to be looked after by my mum. As many in this House know, my second baby is on the autism spectrum.

[Nickie Aiken]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is so important to understand the mental health issues that can surround pregnancies and can occur soon after birth? We need a better understanding of that.

[Angela Richardson]

I could not agree more. By the time I had got to my third baby, they realised that they needed to do more to make sure that postnatally I was in a much better position. In the debate last year, I talked about one of the babies I lost, in the second trimester; I asked for a test to be done, but the hospital did not do it. They just sent the foetus to the incinerator, and they had to apologise for it. I was left wondering for a long time what I had done wrong.

With my son, who is on the autism spectrum, I had post-natal depression and I did not take him to hospital with me. I spent years feeling guilty, because that is what happens to us as mums: we feel guilty for everything and we spend years making things up to our children. That is one of the things that I think we really need to address in looking after the mental health of mums, because it impacts not just on our children, but on their siblings, on our husbands and on family members who are not even in the same country as us.