Baby Loss Awareness Week

Rosena Allin-Khan Excerpts

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

There is nothing that fills me with more pride than having the honour of following all the incredible speeches that have been made from both sides of the House today. There are so many things that divide us in this place, but is it not wonderful that this is not one of them? I thank everyone who has spoken today for their courage.

This annual debate is about having voices heard, and all who have spoken today have said incredibly moving things, but I want to pay tribute to a few people. I thank the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) for moving this debate. In you, Lily lives on, and she will always continue to do so.

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) did Kenneth proud, and I know that 15 October will prove incredibly difficult for you, as I am sure it does every single year, but you hold him in your heart and we hold him in all our hearts. We will be thinking of him on that day. In bringing your passion to this debate, you are ensuring that the other mothers, fathers and partners who go through this do not feel alone.

The right hon. Member for South West Surrey (Jeremy Hunt), with his honesty, reminded us that grief is a lifelong process. The honesty in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) truly highlighted that the journey to parenthood can be fraught with challenges. It is often not easy to admit some of our dark thoughts about other people’s happiness or about the failures we may see in ourselves if we feel that we do not fall into the social construct that society has created for women.

I am going to answer the rhetorical question that the hon. Member for Bracknell (James Sunderland) posed about the validity of his being here and speaking today: yes, you should be speaking. It is important to represent everybody who has gone through the same lived experiences, and you brought them to the Floor of the House.

Turning to the hon. Member for Guildford (Angela Richardson)—my goodness—the guilt surrounding parenthood is so rife, and we must be kinder to each other in society. There is nothing worse than sitting in an NCT group full of people who delivered their wonderful babies in a water bath when you went through a crash C-section and feel like a failure, crying into your cake as you wonder what is wrong with your body that meant that you could not give birth in a bath with some whale music. What you highlighted today shows us the importance of understanding that the journey through the birth process does not end once you have given birth. We have to look after each other and keep an eye on people’s mental health.

It is so important that we talk about stigma. I know about this from my work as a doctor in the emergency department over the last 16 years. I have seen countless parents come into that department. I have seen a mother, bleeding, pleading with me to tell her whether she is losing her baby, and I have known the heartbreak of performing the examination and either confirming her very worst fears or sometimes, even worse, saying, “I do not know—and I am really sorry, but it is Friday afternoon and you will have to wait for your scan on Monday morning to find out.” I see mothers who ask, “Did I eat the wrong cheese? Did I exercise too much? Should I have given up work and just stayed at home? Have I done this, doctor, have I done this?” No, you have not.

I say to every mother who is watching the debate today and asking herself if she has done something wrong, “You have not done anything wrong. Your baby was loved; your baby was wanted; you did everything right.” It is so important that we support mothers on this journey—mothers who are living with the guilt, living with the stigma, wondering if people are thinking to themselves, “Well, she clearly did not read the rules properly. We seem to have managed just fine.” To every mother who worries about that, I say, “You are not alone.” I thank all the charities that are out there doing such incredible work to eradicate the stigma, but there is still so much more to do.

To all the partners—supportive partners—who are told not to share their emotions, and told that their emotions are not as valid because they were not carrying the child, I say, “That is rubbish.” They are told not to acknowledge their grief, and are encouraged just to go back to work. It is a case of “Stiff upper lip—these things happen.” I say to them, “You are entitled to grieve. You are entitled to feel every single emotion that is due to you, because these are your emotions and that is your right.” Everyone does it differently: there is no one-size-fits-all model. We have to understand, and our health services have to be built to have a capacity that understands the nature of grief and understands that it is different for everyone. However, when we are doing this together here today, we are already going some way towards breaking down that stigma, and we are breaking it down every year when we have this debate.

It has been an incredibly difficult 18 months, and people’s experiences of baby loss during this time have been incredibly heartbreaking. During the pandemic there has been reduced access to face-to-face appointments, and when appointments have taken place in person, partners have been excluded, leaving women to receive the very worst of news on their own. Expectant fathers pace the car park, wondering when they will be allowed in to hear that very worst of news. Women are often forced to take decisions alone. I want to thank the NHS staff who have worked tirelessly throughout the pandemic, and have had to go above and beyond when visitors were not allowed into hospitals following a loss. However, I also want to highlight the important fact that there are babies that are lost when the loss could have been avoided. In the House we discuss many cases in which loss cannot be avoided, but this is not one of them.

That leads me on to the importance of inequalities in this debate. It is the saddest fact of all that where a family live and how socioeconomically well off they are can determine the likelihood of their baby’s surviving or not. Black and ethnic minority women are more likely to deliver by emergency caesarean section and less likely to have pain relief during labour, and receive fewer home visits from midwives. Stillbirth rates for black babies, including black British babies, were over twice those for white babies, while neonatal death rates were 45% higher. Black women are still four times more likely than white women to die in pregnancy or childbirth in the UK. With an ongoing inquiry into systemic racism in NHS maternity services, we must ensure that action is taken to eradicate these gross disparities. We need change now: women cannot and should not wait any longer. It is not acceptable, and these families deserve better. Many of us will have heard stories of women who were told that they needed an extra scan between the 20-week scan and giving birth, but professionals were concerned that because they were Muslim they might want to sex-select, and they were therefore denied the scan. That is atrocious. Preventable deaths have occurred because of such practices, and they must be eradicated.

Research published last week found persistent inequalities for ethnic minority women accessing mental health care after giving birth. It found that 98% of women were willing to be treated for their mental health, but one third had not received any treatment. including talking therapies such as cognitive behavioural therapy or counselling. About one third of the women surveyed felt that

“receiving treatment for emotional or mental problems carries social stigma.”

We have to understand, in our multicultural society, that everyone deals differently with mental health matters, particularly in relation to having children. We must have services that are able to handle the differences in our communities.

The major treatment stigma-related barriers to accessing services were found to be women’s concerns that they might be seen as “a bad parent”; not wanting mental health problems to be on medical records; concern that their children might be taken into care; and concern that they might be seen as “weak”. Those are the voices that we need to recognise today. We are in a place of privilege. We can stand here and talk about our experiences, people can learn from them, and we can feel that we are doing our bit to deal with our grief, but what about all those thousands of women’s voices across the country that are not heard? Today we are speaking for all of them as well.

Post-natal depression or anxiety in black, Asian and ethnic minority mothers is 13% higher than in white mothers. A 2011 study found that black women are the group least likely to initiate treatment for post-natal mental illness, and the least likely to receive follow-up treatment. We must do better, we can do better, and I truly believe that there is a collective will across the House to do better.

Let me ask a few questions of the Minister, whom I welcome to her place. Will bereavement support after the loss of a baby be standardised to avoid the postcode lottery that too many families experience? No one should have to lose three babies to receive miscarriage support; what are the Government doing to ensure that people have the support they need when they need it, not after miscarriages? Has data begun to be collected on miscarriage, stillbirth and pre-term rates, and if not, will the Government commit themselves to that? What is the current progress on the women’s health strategy, and who from the Government will be taking this forward following the reshuffle?

By talking about these issues so openly and honestly, we work to remove the stigma surrounding them. The pandemic has undoubtedly brought additional barriers that make the experience of losing a baby even more isolating, but it is stigma and the lack of understanding that can make people feel most alone. I will finish, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Nickie Aiken) did, by saying to anyone watching today: you are not alone.