Bereaved couple raise funds for hospital cold cots

Satveer Kaur Binning and Shanghara Singh Binning launched the appeal after having a stillborn baby last year

Satveer Kaur Binning was more than 40 weeks pregnant when her baby's heartbeat stopped.

She and her husband Shanghara Singh Binning then had to go through the trauma of delivering their stillborn daughter, Siaan, naturally.

One thing that helped them, the Coventry couple said, was being able to spend time with Siaan thanks to the use of the hospital's cold cot.

They have since launched a fundraising appeal, raising more than £7,000 so far, for more cots which will be donated to hospitals.

A cold cot is an infants' bed refrigerated to preserve the body. They can either be standalone cots or involve pads attached to an electric cooling unit.

Mr and Mrs Binning were able to spend two days with their daughter at Coventry's University Hospital last October. Relatives were also able to visit.

“In all the grief and all the horror that we have had to deal with, that’s the one thing that I could say was a light in our journey, because it allowed us that time with Siaan,” Mrs Binning, 31, said.

Mrs Binning said the cold cot allowed them to spend time holding Siaan and taking photos, such as the one above

“Nothing is going to help in that moment [more] than spending time with your baby. And that's why the cold cot is so important,” she said.

The term stillbirth applies to babies who are born dead after 24 completed weeks of pregnancy. This happens in about 1 in 200 births in England, according to the NHS.

Hospitals are not obliged to have cold cots, leaving it to the decision of individual NHS trusts.

Donations from strangers

The couple’s fundraising has so far mostly involved donations from friends, relatives, and people in their Sikh community.

A group of 15 have agreed to run Coventry’s half marathon on 28 April as part of the campaign.

Instagram account UK Sikh Updates shared one of the couple's posts, leading to more people to share their experiences and donate.

Mr and Mrs Binning hope their appeal can raise awareness in the Sikh community about stillbirth.

“I would say 90% of the people in our culture don't tell anyone,” said Mr Binning, 30, who runs a wedding and events venue.

For the Sikh festival of Vaisakhi on 13 April, the couple plan to set up a stall on Stoney Stanton Rd and hand out tea in cups that have Siaan’s name on them, as well as a QR code that links to a webpage telling her story.

A standalone cold cot from Abigail's Footsteps, left, and pads attached to an electric cooling unit from CuddleCot, right.

The couple have contacted several NHS trusts to ask if they would like such a cot.

Of the three cots they have been able to buy so far, one will go to Wolverhampton’s New Cross Hospital and they are finalising homes for the other two.

They are purchased from organisations such as Abigail’s Footsteps, a Kent-based baby loss charity, and CuddleCot, a Gloucester-based company.

In recent years, many NHS hospitals have also opened specialised delivery rooms and hired more bereavement midwives for parents who lose a baby, as public awareness of this issue has grown.

“We're never going to forget Siaan - that's without question,” Mr Binning said.

“And hopefully one day, [when] we do have kids, we want them to realise they had an older sister.”