A mum has welcomed her rainbow baby into the world just a year after losing her daughter at 31 weeks when she caught Covid-19.
Megan Eatock, 25, originally from Bolton, but who now lives in Leyland, had a healthy first pregnancy last year, until she fell ill and started suffering with what she thought were Braxton Hicks - phantom labour pains. However, by the evening Megan had started bleeding and called her midwife - who asked her to come in immediately.
Tragically, Cassidy Rae, was delivered stillborn, by C-section on October 9. Parents, Megan and her partner, Jack Cudworth, were able to spend almost a week in the bereavement suite at Royal Preston Hospital with their daughter before having to go home.
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Now, the new mum has spoken out about the "postcode lottery" in bereavement care to support baby loss awareness week and calls for improvements across the country. Megan told The Mirror : "We are lucky enough that we live in this postcode and we got this kind of help and care.
“I’m from Bolton and if I still lived there I wouldn't have got it which is such a shame. I know people who have gone through baby loss who haven’t got that just because of where they live.”
Their journey has not been without unimaginable challenges, but Megan and Jack welcomed their rainbow baby, Ophelia Cassidy on October 4, weighing 8lbs 5oz. Looking back on their memories of Cassidy, Megan recalls how they spent six days in a “gorgeous” bereavement suite at RPH, sleeping beside Cassidy.
Megan said: "It was like having a live baby, everyone came to visit and we had some professional pictures done. The room was gorgeous as well, it was like being at home.
“I’ve heard people’s story where they just get sent home the next day. It just makes me really sad. We were able to sleep next to Cassidy, it’s so important to have those memories when that’s all you’ve got because you don’t get to come home with your baby and make memories.”
While Megan and Jack have been able to make some happy memories, experts have warned that elsewhere, mothers and babies’ lives are at risk as the NHS faces a maternity staffing crisis. Charity bosses have called on Prime Minister Liz Truss to “listen to the pain and suffering of bereaved parents” and mandate improvements in their care.
The damning report by the Royal College of Midwives and baby loss charity Sands, paints a bleak picture of services that are understaffed and overstretched. More than half of NHS staff surveyed (57 percent) said they would walk out of midwifery in the next year as a result.
An audit by Sands across the UK in April found that less than half of NHS Trusts offered staff bereavement care training and only 12 percent made it available during working hours. An estimated 13 babies are stillborn in the UK every day and roughly a quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriage.
Sands is now calling on NHS Trusts to sign up to its National Bereavement Care Pathway, to close the gaps and deliver equal care across the country. But charity CEO, Clea Harmer, said if the government were to mandate these calls for improvement, everyone could receive equal care.
She told the Mirror: “It feels sad that in many ways it’s not much that we are asking for parents to be given at such a terrible time but it will make such a difference in the long run. By having a hands off approach the government is actually making it very difficult for the staff on the ground to feel able to ask for the time and the training and bereavement suites and things because the leadership of trusts are focused on other things.
She added: “If I was to sit down with Liz Truss I would say, understand how important this is, listen to bereaved parents and the pain and the suffering they go through and the difference the bereavement care can make.”
Set up in 2017 the NBCP already has 105 NHS Trusts in England signed up, but not all of them are meeting the gold standards yet.
Mark Harder, Head of Bereavement at Sands said: “You don't choose which hospital you go to for your maternity services based on how well they handle bereavement and nor would you or should you really know about it.
“Many parents will say this is the club they never wanted to join. They find incredible support from those who may have already been bereaved for some time and it's when they meet that they say ‘hang on a second you received that care and my hospital 10 miles away doesn't offer any of that’.”
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