West Midlands couple share miscarriage experience to help others

Teddy was born during the first national lockdown

A couple whose son was born at 27 weeks following three miscarriages have spoken of their journey to help others.

Caroline Baldwin gave birth to baby Teddy in the first week of the first lockdown, meaning the family spent a lot of time apart.

"It was a really frightening time," she said. "The three of us were not in the same room for 10 weeks."

After their third miscarriage, the couple sought help from the pregnancy and baby loss charity, Tommy's.

The pair, from Streetly, West Midlands, paid for a biopsy on the lining of Mrs Baldwin's womb, which found a type of cell in higher numbers than normal, so were fighting off the baby.

She said: "They recommended some treatment, so for pregnancy number four, with Teddy, we were on the heparin injections and then progesterone and a steroid, daily for the first of 12 weeks, and thankfully that meant that we had a successful pregnancy.

"For me I just wanted to know that I'd had every possible test that I could before I had another pregnancy because facing another loss, for us, it just felt like it was out of the question.

"I don't think we could have got through it again."

The couple went through three miscarriages before Teddy was born

Mark, Caroline's husband, said the miscarriages were "just heartbreaking every time".

He said: "To go through three miscarriages and think we might not be able to have children naturally it was was tough."

Speaking of when Teddy was born, weighing just 2lb 3oz, and not being able to visit his wife and child, he said: "It's pretty traumatic 'cause you not only had the worry of 'is Teddy gonna survive' but also 'is Caroline going to survive 'cause she was really poorly as well.

"I couldn't hug my brother and my dad, anyone, I was here alone for 10 days."

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Mrs Baldwin said they spent a lot of time apart due to the lockdown restrictions.

"Only one parent could visit every day so we would take it in turns at the beginning, and then as I sort of started to breastfeed, I went in every day," she said.

"So it did mean about five days at a time, Mark wouldn't get to see Teddy."

Jane Bewin said the charity, Tommy's, is carrying out research on miscarriage and still-birth

Jane Bewin, chief executive of Tommy's, said: "Some of the work we've done on miscarriage and indeed stillbirth has revealed what again we see in pre-term birth, which is essentially the huge toll that it takes on parents when their babies are born pre-term.

"It can just have a huge impact on people, so the campaign was really around increasing the amount of support that parents would get through having a pre-term baby, and indeed looking after the baby for the first year of its life."