Episode 193: Lauren Petrie

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0:33Hello, I'm Sophia Lusbexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it all work. I'm a singer and I've released eight albums in between having my five sons, aged between seven years old and nearly 22. So I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but it can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a little bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hello. I speak to you from the past, not so distant past.

1:13It's Monday. It's Monday the 5th of October and I'm walking under an unseasonably warm October sun here in London town. It's, I mean look, it's lovely. I've left the house in my bloody jelly shoes and no cardi, but it's kind of weird, isn't it? We know it's not right, but it's still feeling quite good for the soul today. I'm loving seeing all the autumnal colors. Quite like the change of season. And I don't know about you, but whenever there's a change of season, it always kind of makes me reflect a little bit and feel a bit, I don't know, is it sadness a little bit that this year's summer's already been and gone.

1:55So I woke up this morning feeling a little reflective and it might have also been because I knew I was going to have a very important conversation today because I speak to you from the same day where I spoke to my guest. A little while back, I was looking on the internet and I saw a news story about the comedian Russell Howard and he'd put up a note on his Instagram to share the heartbreaking news that when Russell and his wife were having their second baby, their second boy, unfortunately their baby was stillborn. And he said in his message, I just want to say a thank you to our incredible bereavement midwife, Lauren, who really helped us.

2:40And I thought, who is this Lauren? And what an incredible role that is, a bereavement midwife and what an amazingly poignant moment to support a family when they are going through the birth of a baby but it's already known that that baby is not an alive baby so I did some research and I found out exactly who it was and today I bring you a conversation with her. Her name's Lauren Petrie. Lauren has two daughters, Mia, who is 21, Uni, and Jada, who sadly, her heart stopped beating the same day that Lauren gave birth to her. She was due to have a C-section, and she'd gone along for a scan when they were due to have the operation, and they said we're sorry we can't find a heartbeat and so she had the absolutely devastating news that she was not only um she not only found out that her baby had died but she knew that she also had to give birth to this baby and she knew from that moment on that something in her life had changed, changed forever.

4:03And it's changed her life in many ways, not least the fact that she decided to turn her profound grief into something positive that could leave a legacy in her daughter Jada's name. So that is the name of her baby, baby Jada, that could also help other families going through the same thing and so Lauren retrained as a bereavement midwife following that moment and the death of her baby and now she's helped hundreds of families going through the same thing and honestly I can think of no one you would want more in that room with you than Lauren. She's a special person. She is experienced, wise, empathetic, calm, nurturing, all the good stuff.

5:00So it was real. I'm walking along a busy road as usual. It's such a privilege to talk to her. And it was also really important to me that we release this episode during Baby Loss Awareness Week. And so I'm very aware there might be people listening for whom this is really triggering, upsetting. it brings to light a lot of a lot of real trauma so if that's you I'm sending a hug your way and I hope it is some comfort that Lauren who has been through this experience first hand is working so hard and has done so much to really help other people going through the same and give them an experience that will provide them with memories and something comforting in the time that follows and the grief and trauma that comes from the experience.

5:58So, yeah, I will leave you with Lauren. She's incredible. And I'm just, yeah, consider me sitting next to you with my arm around you as your lesson because it's a very sad thing to think about, but how brilliant to reduce the taboo and to help the healing. So, see you on the other side.

6:25um it is really nice to meet you thank you for having me and uh i i've been really looking forward to speaking to you because we had a little phone call yes a while back and i could hear the the warmth and generosity and wisdom in your voice from that point and uh yeah it's look i started this podcast to really explore all aspects of motherhood and also how it can be interwoven with career and I think for your story it is so incredibly poignant in fact your experiences with being mother to your two daughters has absolutely shaped everything about how your your life manifested so why don't we start off with your your work if I was having a baby yeah at what point might our paths cross?

7:20A couple of points. So depending on the situation, so I'm a bereavement midwife and it may be that in some cases parents have an antenatal diagnosis where the prognosis is that it's not really compatible with life and we need to make plans for palliative care. You may meet me at that point where you want to talk about funeral plans or even just what would happen when the baby's born what are my options can I hold my baby can I have a blessing can I have time with my baby it might be those kind of conversations parents want to have in advance to prepare themselves and to know what's coming um not all parents do and we understand that because you're still committed to your pregnancy and you're still your baby's still alive and so why would you want to meet a bereavement midwife at that point or it may be that you come in um as in the majority of cases for me women will come in it may be that they've had reduced fetal movements or they've had some bleeding or something's happened that's made them come into hospital for a check and when they arrive they're told that their baby has died and at that point you would meet me or when you come back into hospital for your induction so the this is like obviously incredibly traumatic devastating moment for these parents in any of the situations in which they might encounter you yeah and so you've obviously come into the world of bereavement midwifery because of your own experience yeah so what are the ways that it's dealt with now that have changed from your experience so if it was happening to someone that they come in and there's no heartbeat what would be the expected what options would they have I guess the biggest thing is that when I had Jada that was in 2013 there wasn't there weren't as many bereavement midwives for one at all I was lucky enough that at the hospital I had her there was a bereavement midwife she was brilliant and so that's the first thing is even having the resource available to have a specialist midwife available to speak to and care for you and secondly it's more about awareness and education and people understanding how to have those conversations the guidance around a minimum standard of care as well that should be offered things like having bereavement rooms they weren't available then people would just be in a normal hospital room um and even still there are still hospitals out there that i think could be in a better position in terms of the resources that they have for people um things like counseling services at the time we had a brilliant i had a brilliant counselor called caroline caroline wieland um actually spoke to her this morning funnily enough and she had been volunteering her time as a counsellor because there was nothing set up now we have charities in place and also specializing counselling for black and asian women as well so those services have grown massively over the last decade I'd say which is so important because that mental health that you're going through after pregnancy you don't have any more contact with your midwife because you have 28 days care 28 days is nothing in that situation six months down the line three years down the line who do you go to you don't have anybody so the mental health services that we have are so important now in terms of support and then think about future pregnancy and preparing yourself for that as well going into the next pregnancy in a really healthy as healthy as possible mindset and so I think those are the biggest things training education and resources really and so in terms of the bigger picture how I don't suppose you know how likely you are to have a bereavement midwife in the hospital which you're registered um well it's now become a standard oh they should you should have specialist bereavement midwives it kind of depends on the number of births that you have in the hospital of how many midwives you have for those services so for us at my hospital we have a really really high number of births so we're naturally going to have a higher number of deaths so we need to have more midwives to be able to support that if you're in a hospital where you have less births you might have a bereavement midwife maybe four days a week or or maybe a full-time midwife as well but most hospitals now would have a bereavement midwife and it's really important to say that all midwives are trained to offer bereavement care this isn't something that's only dependent on there being a bereavement midwife there every single midwife in this country is trained to give bereavement care everybody knows how to do memory making should know how to have difficult conversations and support families as well the specialist role really is about that extra part of being able to support families on a bit of a deeper level understanding the intricacies of all the admin because there's so much admin to do for this yeah and also that follow-up person and having a named person as your follow-up because the midwife in the delivery room is only there for the birth I should imagine that's actually the really crucial thing is about the the longer term relationship and support definitely in that the next bits definitely as you say otherwise your midwife is there for the birth yeah yeah and for the outcome of the birth and whatever shape that is and then it gets passed on yeah it doesn't it exactly depending on what level of need you have exactly but when it's happening that you're called in you know that they're going to need the sort of support you can offer yeah for the months some families will only want to speak to me once uh some maybe want three times some speak to me for six, nine months later, and some will still contact me in a future pregnancy and say, okay, I'm pregnant again.

12:47What do I do? Who do I need to see? This time I'm feeling about it. I'm really scared. I'm really anxious. So that relationship goes on for, can go on for a very long time. And I feel like it's really important then to, I feel like all midwives, you have to be able to make a relationship with somebody very quickly. You know, you're in a very intimate situation, but it's really important for me. I feel like that I really established that relationship with families early on as possible. Because the one thing that I really felt as soon as my midwife came in, I felt like I really trusted her straight away.

13:20I felt that she came in and she just picked me up off the floor, literally, and looked after me. And that's what I wanted to emulate. And everything that I do for every family that I look after, I want to be that rock for them. And to be that, you have to be able to create that trust and relationship from the very beginning. I should imagine you're very, very good at that. I mean I hope so I mean we're all human right so yeah we're not naturally going to always gel and there might be and it's a very difficult situation to walk into and want to gel with somebody but I think I'm just really honest and open and sometimes I will share my story if I think it helps the situation I don't always but I really hope that when you do anything with love and authenticity and genuine wanting to help somebody then that will naturally come across and that would never get in the way of something being misunderstood as to why I want to help somebody.

14:14That's so true and the intention when empathy is at the root of it, it's a very powerful thing. That connection can form very fast actually. I think our instincts, particularly when we're vulnerable actually, you can tell when someone is like, okay, you are my rock in this. And one thing when we spoke on the phone before that really struck me and I found it, I don't know why it really moved me so much, but you were saying that when someone is giving birth to a baby that they know will be stillborn, that the language doesn't change when the tone changes. So the way that someone would be encouraged and keep the momentum going for the birth.

14:52Yeah, yeah. And it's so, I always, whenever I'm in that situation, I always think back to when I was pushing with Jada. And with Mia, I'd wanted just a bit of a backstory. I was like Earth Mother, I want the birth centre, I want whale music, I want hammocks, I want water, I want to use the pool. And that didn't happen. I had an emergency section. It was not very nice, but I had a baby and I was so grateful for that. So the next time when I had Jada and I was in all fours and I was almost trying to recreate what I wanted to have the first time round, in all fours and pushing. But I said to the midwife, I just stopped pushing and I said, I don't have any motivation to do this.

15:33What am I doing this for? I've got no baby at the end of it. I've got no prize. And when you're going through all this pain and energy and effort to do this, you get something at the end and I'm not going to get that. And then she said to me, which to this day, I still say to other parents, she is your beautiful baby. And I know you really want to meet her. And in that moment, I said, yeah. And she knew that I didn't want to have any doctors in the room. I just wanted it to be really peaceful. Nothing against any doctors out there. I just wanted it to be really calm and peaceful and intimate. And she said to me, you know, we're getting to the point where if you don't push, I am going to have to ask for help, which was the right thing to say, because she did.

16:12That was the reality. But that was what I needed to hear. And I kind of flipped myself over, got into a semi-recumbent position, and I just went for it. And that was my motivation that I needed to hear in that moment of, she is your baby. You're going to be able to hold her and meet her, because ultimately that's what we do want to do we still want to be able to meet and hold our babies so when I've got a woman in that situation and you know she's finding it difficult or she's transitioning as any woman would we like you say the language is the same but the tone is different so instead of saying come on you're doing it you're doing so well keep going and you're just like you're doing really really well keep going you're doing so well you're going to meet your beautiful baby and you just tone everything down a little bit but the language is the same yeah and i think i think that in that absolute devastation of a completely altered reality and trying to grapple with all the things you had in your head the way you thought life was going and then suddenly faced this completely unknown yeah new new moment it is so important that to remember there's still a baby there and that you will want to hold your baby and engage and that these will become the memories that yeah they existed yeah and it's the only memories and that's so important to remember you know you have a lifetime with your children of memories but the only memory you have with your baby that's died is at that moment and the hours that will follow so important so important to get that right and to give people the time to create those memories yeah and even the memory of giving birth that's still a memory or the memory of holding her i held her for like 10 hours she stayed with me um and i naturally came to a point which a lot of people do will naturally come to a point where they're ready to say goodbye but i still to this day feel like i didn't make enough memories so i've only got a handful of pictures and nowadays people will have an album full of pictures which is beautiful there's this really amazing charity um called remember my baby and they come in and and as you would at the live birth you know you're holding your baby you've got your arm around your husband and you're doing all those pictures with your hands with the baby's feet in the heart and we do that for families as well and they walk away with just beautiful albums of pictures of their babies but I didn't have that and I really wish that's the one thing I wish I'd done was take more pictures of her but it sounds like you were in a landscape that's maybe was still evolving to support definitely yeah because actually you know this is such recent history i wonder why this has been so this this hasn't been looked at as much detail and it's still evolving now yeah because when i was i was reading today one of your interviews and then there were lots of comments underneath and the comments were just breaking my heart because there were women saying oh yeah this was me yeah 20 years ago 10 years ago 60 years ago some people have come to me and told me about so and in those days babies were just swept away swept away put into a room and never to be seen again never to be spoken i know and it's i mean it's we we have something so there's something coming up called baby loss awareness week and we it's about raising awareness really of baby loss and pregnancy loss and at the hospital that i work at we'll put this little tree up and you can come along and put a message or a name on the tree and so many people because it's in a hospital it's not just maternity so many other people from older generations will come and say you know I had a baby in 19 whenever 60 1970 and I never got to see my baby and I never held them and I never even had a name some people don't even have a name which is so important and so that that is held that pain is held for so long and how that I always think about how that impacts the next generation yeah and how that their daughter or their son then felt about when they were pregnant and having a baby and the impact of how their mother and their experience affected them it's just it's so important to have what we have now and I think yes we are in a much better place it can be even better it can always be better but that's just me being a perfectionist and wanting more but it's really important that we are doing the best that we can not just for the family's number for the future yeah and i don't think you're from what i understand of you from what i've been seeing so far your drive i don't know perfection i think it's because you you've had this experience and you've obviously done something that a lot of people would find really hard to do but you've absolutely stared it straight in the face and and tried to really go through every element what where is there going to be the things i just have to sit and deal with and where could I've had where could the support shift that was a very conscious decision on my part though to to to deal with it in the way that I have and it was a turning point and I remember it and it's something that is so bittersweet to me this is going to get a bit deep now just for anybody that is listening but I was sitting on my kitchen floor and I was literally a very very very dark place and it was a contemplation of what am I going to do here and I think I told you that I'd read this book Levels of Life by Julian Barnes and it was talking about his grief after his wife died and in the book he said if I were to take my own life who would be here to make the world remember her and I thought yeah that's that's that's a really good point actually I hadn't thought of that and I said okay I'm gonna make a decision now that I am gonna face this I am gonna deal with it I said to my counsellor I don't want to be 70 years old and asking where my baby is I feel like I need to go through really deal with this and really process this and and face head-on everything that comes my way to be able to make not make sense of it because I can't make sense of it but to make it worthwhile and positive and something meaningful out of this because otherwise why am I going through all this yeah and so I then made a conscious effort to say okay I really have to deal with this face on and a lot of people will say to me why do you do this why do you go back to work every day in the same room where you gave birth with her name on the door isn't that torture and actually it's the opposite it's really healing because it's making me remember that everything that I'm doing is for her it's her legacy and it's helping so many other people which gives it meaning for me that was the most important thing i think that that's such a resonant thing about the meaning and about giving her she existed yeah that's exactly it and i think for everybody they want to know that all the people we love have the the concentric circles of how they've affected things and the positive that comes out of their existence is a very instinctive feeling, I think, that comes with love.

23:18Yeah. And so I can absolutely understand that. And I've always felt that if anything happened to any of my children, I would say their name, like, all the time. Yeah, yeah. I'd want everybody around to say their name, say their name. There was a campaign called Say Their Name because of the importance of the acknowledgement that they existed and they still exist in our worlds. Yeah. Every day. And look what Jade has done. I know. Look what she's done. I'm proud of her. It's incredible. And also an amazing way that humans can take something so extraordinary painful and find a purpose. That was also a lesson, though, to Mia.

23:58I was very, very conscious of her seeing all this. She was seven years old. She turned seven a week later. Oh, it was her birthday a week later. Oh, my gosh. If you'd seen me, you would have thought, what on earth is going on in this woman's head? because I went into mum mode and I thought, I have to pull it through for Mia for her birthday. I can't let her down. We had a bowling party. And looking back, I probably looked like a manic woman. And I was in reality. But I felt like I had to keep it going for her. And I was so conscious of, and even to this day, we still talk about it, about life and what life will throw at you and how you, you may not have control over what happens to you, but you have control of the way you then deal with it.

24:41I was so conscious of her going through life and understanding that even when the worst times happen to you, you have a choice of how you then deal with that. I needed to role model to her how to be able to manage terrible things that happen in her life. And this is one of the ways that I could show her that. Yeah, wow. I can picture that, you say, that sort of energy of like, okay, the party still has to happen and booking it all and just feeling completely all over the place. I think it's the guilt. I felt so much guilt. To this day, the one thing that will make me the most upset thinking about things is the impact it's had on Mia.

25:18I had a vision of having three children and a family home and all of those things I wanted to give her, the same that I had. And then when Jada died, that all came crashing down and I feel mum guilt for not giving her that family. And so that birthday was me saying, I can't let this now take this away from her as well I've taken so much already I need to keep going give her the party and give her the amazing life and I think as well with your you know with like when you're turning seven you're still so much in your early childhood yeah so somewhere in you is this desire to set a tone that things still happen to have your friends around you still celebrate her life events yeah also probably not really able to process very much at all no so soon and also so unexpected I mean presumably you had very little experience at all with even this happening to anyone even anecdotally yeah and in my family I remember when I was at the hospital and my mum walked into the scan room and the first thing my mum said was things like this don't happen to our family and so many people say that because you go through life just not having to deal with things like this and I never forget her saying that and I said but they do mum but It's just that we don't talk about it.

26:34And they have been for decades, but we just haven't spoken about it. And as soon as you do start speaking, you then learn that it happens to so many other people.

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27:20so as a mum how how did you navigate your grief alongside a little girl who's only just turning seven sometimes I would literally scream into the duvet because I just felt I just needed to release the love I feel like I had so much love and frustration a little bit of anger but not a lot but just this energy inside me that I couldn't release so I would sometimes do that I didn't want her to see me being crazy but I was I was okay with her seeing me upset because we're human and she needed to understand that if something like this happens it's okay to be upset and I say that to a lot of parents it's very difficult to kind of get the balance of being able to function do all the things you need to do but still be honest and be in your truth about what the situation is it's really important for children to learn that children are extremely black and white and when it happened I said to my mum I need to be the person that tells me yeah so I went home I'd gone home I think it was on the next day after I'd given birth she died on the 27th of March she was born on the 28th which was actually the day that I was supposed to have a cesarean section and so on the 28th in the afternoon I went home to Mia and I said to her she said where's my sister and I said well she's she's in heaven and on the way home from Mia school we always drove past War Lake Cemetery and we'd always wave to the people that were there and say hi hello people that are there like we hope you're okay wherever you might be again me trying to kind of bring her into understanding life and death as a lesson for any child and I said to her you know the place we drive past every day that's where her body will be but her spirit will be with us and she said well what happened to her and I said well her heart stopped working at this point I didn't know why she died but I did know that her heart stopped working and so I said that and she said okay and then that kind of was the end of the conversation and I thought I don't feel like I don't feel like an adult as he's spoken enough about it but as a child that was what she needed to hear it's very black and white and then it was only a few days later that we'd arrived home and her friends from school had sent a bunch of flowers for her the class and she completely broke down and that for me even when I think about it now it just breaks my heart because I can to this day count on one hand the amount of me the times that me has cried like that and she I think then the reality of the situation she she could just feel everything that was happening and so we then I then said okay I need to approach this from a place of truth and with her and honesty and when we're both feeling upset it's okay for us to process that and ever since then that's how we've dealt with it I bet you guys have the most amazing relationship yeah we do and we still talk about Jada we have this little thing where if anything goes missing in the house we say Jada where's my earring or where's my ring and we kind of integrate her into her life like that but it's It's not our core thing that we have every day.

30:31You know, life goes on. So we respect her, we love her, we acknowledge her in a way that's kind of lighthearted, but she's still with us. Yeah, and I think keeping a casual, ongoing connection is actually very representative of what family life feels like most of the time, isn't it? It's not, this is the bit where we all sit down and light a candle. It's an everyday within the fabric. Exactly. And for the rest of Mia's life, she will have her like that in her head. Yeah, I hope so. I really hope so. Yeah, and even the moment I was listening to you talk about how it was like Jada knew when Mia was near, so every morning before school she'd get to bed with you and she'd start kicking.

31:09Yeah, yeah. So they had a sisterly thing going on already. Yeah, yeah. I wonder where you got the presence of self to wave at the Mort Lake Cemetery. I don't know. I think it's just one of those things as a parent, you understand the things you need to teach your children, right? You know, you have to teach them really good values, morals, and a balance of the life and the world around us. And part of that was, I'm driving past this place every day. Why am I not mentioning it to her? It's just a natural, it was just a natural thing to bring into our conversation of, well, this is where people go when they've died.

31:46and you can go there and their loved ones can spend time with them and it doesn't mean that they're they're not a part of your life anymore you just it's just a different way of loving somebody yeah and then also the ongoing nature of things i think it's i think it's well for me it's very healthy to have the idea of the people that have gone before being part of life as it is now as well and it sounds as well it may be this because before your uh training as a bereavement midwife you'd been at the other end of the spectrum literally elderly people it was so crazy but so I used to work in a nursing home so that's what happened after you had your first so after me yeah I moved into working in a nursing home lovely lovely place and I it taught me so much it's also a convent so I was surrounded by nuns extremely wise people who just taught me so much and at the point when Jada died I went back to work there briefly and I was in quite a negative space when I went back there and I had some really, really good conversations with my manager then, Sister Jennifer, who was just an amazing woman at perspective and not just putting a positive spin on things in a religious way or in any kind of way, just getting you to get perspective on something and looking at the whole picture and acknowledging how you're feeling but also being able to look at other sides and perspectives of things.

33:14So yeah, I was working in elderly care and it taught me, it kind of prepared me for him to be free because everything I learned there was transferable about dignity, about respect, about intimacy, about being a part of that privileged space in somebody's life, whether that's at the beginning or at the end. So I learned so much there and in a funny way, it did prepare me for what was coming next. yeah and the poignancy of being when someone when their spirit leaves something incredibly poignant about being present um for that moment in someone's life and it sounds a little bit like sister jennifer was actually an incredible mental health counselor yeah because what that's doing about framing yeah is really incredible isn't it yeah yeah because it's so if you start to lose hope that's when things get really bad right so when you're talking about something senseless and painful and sad for someone to be able to say well let's let's put this in perspective and see it look at it from different angles and see where we can find something that's comforting yeah exactly that's a skill isn't it to be able to talk to you about those things yeah and as you say the dignity and the respect for that environment as well because you were there for years yeah seven years yeah but when you first had after you'd had jada and tried to go back there you just thought no it was just it was almost like i needed to take myself out of that situation because it was just a constant reminder and being around the residents blessed them all for loving me so much that they cared so much um and i'd meet people that then had forgotten it had happened and might say oh what's happened to your baby and it was just it was just a bit too much too soon yeah but that presumably would happen in your everyday life as well it did happen everyday life and it was so oh gosh navigating that first six months to a year I'd say after she died was just horrendous because you bump into people that you haven't seen and they last saw you when you were you know 30 weeks pregnant oh how are you how's your baby because now you look you know six months after you would have given birth your body's back to normal they think the baby's probably at nursery you have to explain to them what's happened some people were really really lovely and some people I mean to put it bluntly they just weren't they'd said things that were really stupid and people do say that um and I always say when I'm doing my teaching about this we are human we are going to make mistakes and we are going to say things that probably not the best thing to say the most important thing you do in that moment is you apologize and acknowledge what you've said because if you don't they will hold on to that forever and I definitely have there's a few things that one of the mums at school I was when I was dropping off Mia because when I went into labor I was at the school in the Easter assembly and she said oh where's your baby and for whatever reason she hadn't been told what had happened and I said she died Mia was standing next to me and she said oh don't be silly and I said I promise you I'm not being silly and I was kind of looking her straight in the eye to say like my child's standing here I'm trying to keep it real with you but let's not make this more difficult than it needs to be she literally walked over to my car and looked in the back seat to see where my baby was and I just from that day I never spoke to her or even said hello to her again because I just thought you're an idiot I mean that is next level exactly and so there are some things that people can say well you know you've got more children don't you can have another one all those things are really not helpful because if you've got 10 children at home you wanted that 11th child it doesn't matter how many children you've already got or you're going to have in the future it's just so minimizing in that moment to say that it doesn't matter nothing will take that away so there were some things that were said that I could understand but weren't helpful there were some things that were just horrible yeah and I suppose thinking about it, some of these things would be the things that were said for decades, centuries.

37:18Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that thing of, you can have another one. Oh, yeah. At least you've got Mia. Yeah, at least you can get pregnant. All of those things, you just think, no, please don't ever say that. No, and I suppose... It's not coming from a place of maliciousness. You know, we're fixers. We want to take people's pain away and fix everything, don't we? So we'll say whatever we can to try and ease the situation. Yeah, and like you were talking before about the generational as well, People have experienced something and they maybe were never taught how to, you know, use their language around their grief, around their mourning.

37:50Yeah. I mean, a lot of how we grieve in terms of the cultural side of it is to do with the Victorian era, which was very much about, okay, you wear your black and you do your funeral and then you don't really talk about it much after that. Yeah. so I think you know we're still doing the work aren't we to to heal all of those things as well and um I think people just also just don't know what to say I know but I think just then just don't know what to say but then I'm thinking about you when someone's gone through this they must also feel responsible for how what they're telling that their news is going to affect that person Yeah, it is a massive burden.

38:36And even to this day, it's so difficult because with my family, I'm not going to get upset, but I can speak to my sister really openly, I can speak to my friends, but I feel the burden when I speak to my mum. because I know how much pain she had as a mother. Watching her daughter go through this is awful. And so I don't ever, you know, she'll want me to open up and have really, really honest conversations with her about it, but I don't want to give her that pain. So it's a balance of needing to support her as well through it, needing to have that mother-daughter relationship, but not wanting to give her more grief.

39:21no I mean and I guess with with that experience you can the way to soothe that that guilt you might feel about about being responsible is just to remember that for everybody I mean look where you found your support and the people you know you can share it with your mum will have those people too yeah yeah so for the two of you if that's not an area you deal with together in that way yeah yeah that's as long as it's being dealt with somewhere exactly then that's how those things work yeah but yeah I suppose you'll when you come to it if Mia decides she wants to become parent then you'll be there'll be the you know then you can maybe do some of the conversations and I think I always think about that and how how I'll be and I when I was working I went off for a little holiday at another hospital once um as a matron and we had a woman that came in and and and one of the mothers was requesting a certain birth plan because she had had a previous loss and we were saying it's not really advised and it's not it's going against guidance we don't need to this is a healthy normal pregnancy but it was the impact of that mother's experience now on her daughter and how that was impacting her daughter's care plan so I always think I have to really check myself when Mia's pregnant to not encroach on her journey because it's not a given that that that the terrible outcome will happen for her and I suppose I mean if anyone is exploring anything that might bring to the surface the difficult things it's you and I'm aware that you're I can actually I can understand where the healing comes from helping other people that are going through the same experience but the thing I would be curious about is how it is to be because for a lot of people they don't even want to be in a medical environment it's a hospital that can be very triggering for want of a better word so how have you made peace with those things the unexpected of the environment, the sounds, the smell, the, you know, all of that activity.

41:18I really have learnt the professional and the personal and separating the two, even though I always say to people they're not separated because you can't have one without the other, you know, we're human. But I've really learnt that when I put my uniform on, and I don't have to work in the ward every day, I'm primarily based in an office but I go to work and I wear my scrubs regardless of where I am because if I put on my uniform I'm putting on Lauren the midwife head if I go in my own clothes I feel like it's it's like a boundary thing I don't know it's really strange but mentally and psychologically it just makes me get into the mode of professionalism and so when I go into hospital and I hear the emergency bell or I go in and they're like there's a crash call and I'm thinking oh my god the worst might happen Actually, I'm professionally thinking, preparing myself for how can I support in this emergency?

42:10What do I need to do? What's my algorithm? What's my guideline? So it's creating the boundary for me. And then when I leave the hospital and I take that off, I go back into Lauren mode. And I can process as myself as a human how I'm feeling about it. But I always say to people that that parent's baby's death is their grief. It's not mine. if I took on everybody's grief I wouldn't be here today I'd be a mess and so in the same way that Jada is my baby and it's my grief is the same way that I approach other people's situations that's their baby and their story it's not for me to take that on board it is an extremely sad situation but mentally and emotionally there's a boundary that I won't allow myself to cross in terms of taking on too much it sounds like you have to be incredibly intuitive and tuned into yourself yeah to be working in this space yeah but learning also not to be to be not to be cold with that and be very clinical with it I'm still human I'm still empathetic and give compassionate care but I do it as a professional midwife not as Lauren a mother you know that's so so much for you to think yeah it is it's draining it's really draining sometimes and there have been times when I feel like am I overstepping a little bit am I taking on a bit too much but then I I do check myself and I'm good at doing that and I've got a lot of people around me that will say do you think you need to take a step back or are you okay and so if you said okay I need to have some time that then that will happen okay that's good so there's all the safeguards oh yeah as well yeah yeah because I can see you can take a lot but you're still as you say yeah yeah I'm very conscious of it because I've been a I've been a manager so I'm aware of support and the need for support but I'm also aware that I am a human I am Lauren I'm a mother I'm a sister I need to be able to do all those other things in life and if I need a time out it's because I need to still be able to function in my life and that's important to me so I'm very conscious of how I feel mentally and physically to be healthy to be able to help myself and other people and how many families do you think you have helped oh gosh you keep a tally I mean I I have a tally at work um but uh hundreds hundreds all those babies I know all those names yeah and my colleagues will say to me how do you remember them all but I do I just remember them I remember the story or there'll be something about the situation I say oh yeah that was so and so because I've just remembered it because they mean something to me and when you were that moment when you were in the kitchen and you thought right I have to something has to come out of this that feels better than this for me I have to model it was that when you started the fundraising for Jada's room but you're kind of the same time probably a little bit before that so when I gave birth and I was obviously working in the nursing home my job was a quality assurance manager so I was there to make sure that the standards were maintained look for any improvements and find the gaps to make things better so I was lying there and I naturally as a lot of people do when they're grieving they're going to work mode so I found a bit of paper and I just wrote down all the things as she's lying next to me that I felt were really good about the maternity service and things that I felt could be improved and there were lots of things that could be improved some of those things were we need a bereavement room because I was lying in the hospital bed.

45:47Her dad was lying on a yoga mat in the corner. It was freezing cold. We instantly were separated. And I always say this, like the physical and the mental work together. If we can stay together physically, that I feel like that would have helped us mentally. But we were separated instantly. We didn't have that time as a unit together physically. So that was one of the things, something like having a kettle in the room because we didn't want to go out into the corridor, hearing other babies, him bumping into other dads like oh what have you had I've had a girl I've had a boy and it wasn't fair to do that so I gave the list um to my bereavement midwife and she called me back and she said oh we've looked at the list and actually thank you because there's so many things in there that we want to do but we don't really know how to get it started funding is really difficult a lot of bereavement care and and resources is charity funded and so I said okay I'm going to get you the money to open this room and I put the phone down and I thought Lauren you idiot what have you signed up to you are not going to be able to get thousands of pounds but I just had the determination to do it went back to school and spoke to two of the mums Sophie and Imogen who'd been there at the point when I was contracting and they said we'll help you do it and we did a sponsored walk of Hadrian's Wall and we raised I think the first time about 10 13 000 pounds when they invited me back into the hospital to see the room I was I I nearly, honestly, Sophie, I nearly dropped to the floor.

47:08I couldn't believe it. I saw her name on the door, and I didn't know they were going to name it after her. I thought they were going to call it the Dove Suite or something. And when I saw her name on the door, that's when it clicked. And in that moment, I thought, this is her legacy. I've now started something, and I've got to see this through because I can't walk away from this. Like, this is really, really important. And then I thought, I can do so much more now. and it just opened up the rest of my life even. That's so extraordinary. So do you think it was actually just seeing her name on the door and part of you maybe thought, I can't leave her here.

47:46I can't be a name of a baby where the mum's not here anymore. Exactly. That makes a lot of sense to me. Yeah. How poignant is that?

47:57And it's amazing that you've immediately wrote down all the things as well and that's heartbreaking, the idea of the physical closeness. with the of course the other parents and how it almost immediately set you on different trajectories different courses yes how you grieve yeah and I say to parents now it's so important that you guys you're going to grieve in different ways you have to give each other space to be able to do that but ultimately you are a team and that's the thing you hold on to and even if one of you wants to do counseling and one of you doesn't you still support each other within that it's so important because this does affect people in their marriages it affects them going back to work financially there's so much more of a repercussion a lot of work has been done by professor alex heasel he's like my oracle of pregnancy loss he doesn't even know it if he ever if anybody's ever listening to this you can tell him because i love him but he's done so much research and work on stillbirths and loss and he looked at the repercussion of stillbirth in terms of global impact personal impact in terms of your actual life what does it mean for people not just in that moment of losing a baby but for the rest of their life wow that sounds incredible because it is a holistic experience you can't 100 it's your whole life and i think that's what's so unique about your role as well because for a lot of people they might remember the midwife that was there when they gave birth but that's that's one moment in what followed but for people where it's the start of of grief of mourning you that that continues that that would that role would be something you'd want to keep in there keep going in their life so for you to commit to being that person for people is is a is a big deal it's so it's tricky you know we don't have case we don't have continuity continuity is like a buzzword in maternity right we know that it's really really the best thing we know that having the same midwife throughout your pregnancy is gold standard but we don't have that so i now step into that role of that because when a woman does become pregnant again what's she going to do go to do a referral nobody knows who she is nobody knows the backstory there's a robot that's processing it there's no um human interaction within that so i give them that continuity to say i am your named person now and even though i'm not kind of um supposed to be helping in the next pregnancy that's not really my role there isn't nobody else out there to do that in some hospitals and so i will be that person for them well that's incredible because that's a big thing for people to yeah i think it's needed it is needed and so you said Once you saw Jada's name on the door, you were like, okay, nothing's going to hold me back now.

50:48So what does that look like for your future plans? So that was in 2014. We opened the room on the 24th of September, 2014. So just over a year, a year and a half after Jada died. And I was sitting in the opening of the room. And at the time, there's a lady called Jacqueline Dunkley-Bent, who was the lead midwife at the hospital. She's now the lead midwife of the world, literally. She works for the WHO. And she said to me, yeah. That's the person that was at the hospital then? Yeah, at the time. Whoa. And she said to me, you know, we've done all this work together. We've done all these improvements.

51:23You're working with all these other charities and you're a parent consultant for the NHS. You've done all this work. Why aren't you a midwife? And it's funny because when I had Mia, I thought, oh, I could be a midwife. You know, I think I could do a good job. But it was just a passing thought. And then when Jada died, she said, you know, you've seen both sides of the coin. and so you coming into this with so much rich lived experience to be able to help other people even if you don't go into bereavement it's shaping you as a mother as a human to be able to do this job that's what this is about and so I thought yeah actually maybe I could do this Mia's at older age now she's settled in primary school got really good support from my parents in terms of child care and so I said okay I'm going to do it I went off and did a like an access course because I was a mature student, hadn't been in school for long enough to be able to then go and do a degree.

52:16Did the access course, went and did my training at King's and then trained in the same hospital that Jada was born in. Wow. And now I'm still there now. And you work alongside someone that was there? The staff, the doctors that looked after me, everybody that I had looked after me, I now work with. And does that help keep you in touch with the memories as well? Yeah, I think it does a little bit but it's more of the driving force for all of us as a collective to make things better we really want to make things better and there are a lot of these people people that met jada yeah well that's that's significant too isn't it yeah yeah takes it outside of that room yeah they met jada they were my mentors when i was training and now they're my colleagues so it's such a it's a really deep relationship that i have with them i bet the deepest really i've been through such a significant life event but also met your baby yeah and helped shape what your life has become about it's incredible and so if anyone listening is aware of something like this happening in someone they know's life what would be a good way they can support someone i think it's individual to that person first of all don't try and like dictate what you think the person needs ask them what they need and it might be and also it's about your own skill as a person what are you good at doing if you don't feel comfortable to have a difficult conversation then don't do it but just you know make a dinner or just say let's go for a walk or send a text and say I'm thinking of you I don't know what to say but I'm thinking of you that's okay yeah that's better than saying something that some silly thing that somebody might say but I just think it's about asking the person what they really need and just being there for them that's I think you're right and yeah don't say that and if you do say something say I think you're so right just to say I'm really sorry I don't know why I said that yeah because I think it's okay to acknowledge that this is something we're not necessarily taught yeah how to deal with yeah and what about if this is something that's happened to you and where you're oh it's a tough one because when I I think if you'd met me at the time when I was having that really dark moment and I was I was seeing a counsellor I had midwives and everybody around me I don't think anybody really knew the truth about what was going on with me I really really was good at hiding it so I think my advice would be to be honest with even just one person about how you're really feeling because mental health is you know at the pinnacle of all of this and even if it's just one person that you tell how you're really feeling that person can keep an eye on you and maybe help you to find a support group or a counsellor or speak to your GP or your midwife or whoever that might be but just speak to one person about how you're really feeling because I was able to kind of save myself I guess with the help of Julian Barnes he doesn't even know it um but just to give yourself I guess the the opportunity for someone to help you what was it about the Julian Barnes book that particularly struck it the chord I mean I know he's talking about the death of his wife but how did you I could just it just I was so relatable the things that he was saying I just I could feel it I understood the things he was saying and the emotions that he felt and it just gave me a bit of guidance I guess it gave me it told me what I needed to hear and so he had turned the loss of it he decided to be the witness for his wife and I guess I saw as well that in that book he talks about I might want to get this right I think he said grief is like a like goes upwards it's just climbs but mourning just continues yeah it continues yeah I thought that was a really quite a unique way to talk about how you deal with death and the aftermath I hadn't really heard of it like that yeah and it's acknowledging how like you know that thing people say it gets better with time oh it doesn't get better it just changes yeah I don't know why we've got that phrase even in existence.

56:21I don't know anyone that said, and that turned out to be exactly right. It just changes. I spoke to a parent recently and I was saying to her, she's like, how does it change? And I said, well, for her funeral, in her funeral we kind of dedicated Stevie Wonder, isn't she lovely? And when I used to hear that song, I would literally break down in tears. because it took me back to the funeral day, which is the absolute worst day in all of it. And I was in the supermarket recently and they were playing it. And as it came on, I thought I could hear the dum-dum-dum-dum and I thought, oh God, I'm going to cry.

56:56And then I didn't. And I actually sang along with it because I feel like I'm in a bit of a different place. And it's not to say that I'm not going to go back to feeling sad. I don't put any expectation on myself anymore to say, okay, you're okay now. I never will know if I'm really okay I just feel in a healthier place with it and that's the change rather than it being better yeah you know yeah it's like you I mean they do say you learn to live with it yeah it's yeah but I guess the the significance of grief as it as you wear it as you continue your life alongside it is an absolute bond with that person it becomes symbolic of all the love and ultimately that's that's such a like a bittersweet feeling of love I mean I'm only speaking I haven't I haven't had I do think we need different language sometimes around around loss because I think that there's different some deaths are tragic yeah losing a baby is tragic yeah it's like the ultimate of cruelty yeah it's against the grain of everything we would expect because that person jada never got a chance to do anything beyond have her birthday so i think that we need different language for that but the way that grief shapes our hearts and the way we live in terms of the strength of the love that thing that i do think that you know in julian's words in his book in the way that people continue life that's the bit where you think i can i can i'm i'm proud of having that feeling because it shows the depth of my feeling Yeah, and also I've learned how much it's taught me and how much it's changed me.

58:38I'm so grateful for that. That's the gift that she gave me of how it's made me so much more of a, I feel like a better person, I hope. Maybe somebody else can vouch for that. But I feel like it's made me fuller and more patient, definitely, even though my family might disagree with that. but just more um softer and less agitated by things i'm much more relaxed about the i don't sweat the small stuff because in comparison to what i've been through it is not important actually that made me think of um a long time ago and i spoke to mary berry and she'd lost her son yeah when he was 19 and she said the same thing actually that um she gave her this difference of perspective and she was just calmer about so many things but she did say every once in a while if someone's really upset over something small she can feel this flash of anger like yeah the indulgence of being angry about something that doesn't matter at all yeah i think one of the just when we're going back to what we were saying about if somebody if it's happening to you one of the things that i do speak to people a lot about is understanding you now as the person you are now because when you grieve and when you've had a loss it changes you so much as a person that that can really throw you off because the conversations you had before the jokes that you thought were funny before just the things in general that you might speak about don't become relevant anymore and you're kind of left like oh who am I then because all those things before were what I kind of related to or what resonated with me that changes and you really have to go through a process of understanding who you now are as a person so you're I'm not only was grieving jada but i was grieving lauren i was grieving the person that i was and i feel like maybe i'm a little bit closer to where i was but in a in a new 2.0 version of lauren you know yeah i think that's so wise and i guess also within that you're also a different mother to mia yeah 100 % but for the better i hope yeah yeah and her life will be shaped by this sister that walks alongside I just think it's, I mean, look, if we're in any doubt of the legacy of Jada, not only with the, you know, it went from your experience to the room, to your work, to the people whose lives you affected.

1:01:06And then the reason I saw your name, I know you've been very brilliant and the spokesperson for various campaigns, but I saw the comedian Russell Howard message and he'd put this note up about he and his wife with their second baby. ahead of stillbirth it happened months before he felt ready to share it he's doing an amazing fundraising coming up in february sold out completely incredible well and um and and he'd said i wanted to say about our midwife lauren because she was incredible i just thought i have to know who this she sounds special who's she my phone was blowing up that day everyone's like is that is that lauren you yes it's me yeah but look that's all following on from jada but But look, you can see how Jada has shaped your life.

1:01:54But the other way around is as Jada's mum, you've been the way you mother her. It's incredible. It doesn't stop. You don't stop being a mum whether your child is here or not. And that's the thing, isn't it? I still have a duty to her. And my duty is to make sure that she is a good person. That's what I intended for my children to be good people and do good things. so if she can't be here to do that that is my duty to make sure that I do that for her well I think that's like the ultimate symbol of what motherhood shapes us actually if you're mothering from the get-go without your baby here and all those milestones to make your life about what how they can still shape things the better is like there can't be a better way of summing up what that maternal instinct does.

1:02:44Yeah. Oh, well, I'm so glad that Jada was in the world. Oh, thank you. So that all this good can come out of it. That is such a lovely thing to say. Thank you. I mean it. Thank you, Lauren. You made me cry. We did so well up until now. We did so well. Thank you.

1:03:09Oh, deep breaths. I think after we finished recording not just Lauren and I but my producer Claire as well we all just sat there for a minute and all had a hug gave each other hugs because I thought there was so much about the conversation that was so moving and Lauren and I were so we really did hold it together for quite a long time and then at the end yeah we did get emotional but it's an emotional thing but I think for me the thing that I found so profound was yeah the the instinct to mother to mother a baby even if that baby isn't here and look look at what Jade has done look at what she's given to the world look at how she's helped those families you know her her life didn't just begin and end on that day that she's given so much to jada's room at the hospital to the to the experience learning changing for the better other people's experience of the same thing to all the families that lauren can now help and how she's channeled her grief into saying i i bear witness to my daughter and my daughter's life meant something and it will change these people's experience for the better too so I found that incredibly powerful and uh and also somewhere out there is uh Lauren's daughter Mia who sounds like a force for good too by the way so the generations will continue with that good stuff and thank you so much to Lauren thank you for the generosity of sitting with me and sharing her story even though that is her actual first-hand lived experience it's It's not just something she trots at.

1:05:00This is going back over something incredibly painful. But she's generous enough to share that with us so that it can help. And it does help. I really believe it helps. And now I'm in the park where it's a little bit quieter. And it's been good for me to have a good walk in this nice fresh day. And think about how lucky I am with all the things that can give me, you know, bits of stress here and there but really let it all fall away the conversations like that those experiences that's really what it's all about and um yeah i hope if you're listening i hope if you've been anywhere affected by the conversation you'll find all the resources you need uh wherever you find your podcast we've put some links there for you to the charities that were mentioned and to other ones i know the charity sands has been very helpful for people and that's behind the baby Loss Awareness Week, as well as charities like Tommy's.

1:06:01And thanks to all the people as well that Lauren name-checked for all the work they're doing as well. The counsellor who worked for nothing until people were like, actually, this is a really important resource, and gave her the support. And the doctor, who she said was just an incredible person, doing all the work with the research of how it affects people. The world is filled with good people, really. And it's nice to have the faith in humanity about all that stuff too. so um thank you for lending me your ears thanks for the support with the podcast ongoing uh thank you to lauren for sharing her story thank you to claire for sitting there and with us and uh taking notes even though she was very emotional with what we're talking about understandably thank you to ella may for the gorgeous artwork to richard for editing and i'll see you again with another another chat i am very lucky i love these conversations so much thanks for giving the podcast such support so I can keep having these amazing chats it's uh it's an enriching experience and I really value it thank you all right uh see you see in a week's time and just be a little bit tender with yourself now because sometimes when you have these you sit and you're listening on these chats it can leave you feeling a little bruisey so just take it easy do something fun or something nurturing whatever makes you feel a little bit a little bit looked after go and do that alright lots of love see you next week bye bye

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