Mum's baby loss book chosen for midwife training

Tamarin Norwood was told her son would not live after five months of pregnancy

A book written by a mother who was told her baby would not live while she was pregnant has been selected to train midwives.

Tamarin Norwood, from Northamptonshire, had just 72 minutes with her son, Gabriel, after he was born in December 2018.

She documented her "precious thoughts and impressions" during pregnancy and after giving birth to keep his memory alive. Her book, The Song of the Whole Wide World, was published this month and attracted attention from across the globe.

"It feels like such a tiny story of a tiny life of a tiny baby, and it's just getting bigger and bigger," Ms Norwood said.

The book has been taken on by Warwick Medical School and the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Newcastle University, in Australia, to feature in their respective curriculums.

Tamarin Norwood and her son Anatole, nine, have shared their experience of losing Gabriel

Ms Norwood said it was "amazing" that her book could help other bereaved parents.

For her, the story began when a 12-week ultrasound revealed "a bit of a smudge on the screen".

Five months in to her pregnancy, she was told Gabriel would not live as the amniotic fluid was running out.

'Precious thoughts'

"What that means is sadly when he was born we knew he would not have the strength to be able to breathe and there was no way around that," Ms Norwood explained.

"So it meant that, whatever else was wrong with him, there was only ever going to be one outcome."

She added: "The best thing we can hope for was that he'd be born alive, peacefully, and I would hold him and then he'd die peacefully - and that is exactly what happened."

Ms Norwood said she took comfort in writing her book as it helped her "to not forget".

Gabriel's legacy would now live on via the training of midwives at hospitals across the world, she added.

"It can help to write down those precious, precious thoughts and impressions and try to make them as big as the stories should be," she said.