Couple use baby-loss trauma to help other parents

The couple lost their conjoined twin sons during Ally's pregnancy in 2021 and they say fundraising helps their boys' legacy to live on

Last week, Ally Brown went back to the hospital room in Nuneaton where she lost her conjoined twin sons in 2021.

"I stood outside and I could just feel the tears start," she said.

"And I was like: 'I'm going to do it, because I need to do it for my boys'."

Mrs Brown and her husband Steve have used their experience of baby-loss to help others, raising thousands of pounds for the specialised rooms they relied on two years ago.

The couple returned to the George Eliot Hospital to officially open two refurbished maternity bereavement rooms, which are secluded spaces for parents who deliver stillborn or miscarried babies.

The couple were asked to officially re-open the revamped maternity bereavement rooms last week.

The Browns raised more than £5,000 to revamp the rooms, contributing to a wider charity appeal that raised £25,000 overall.

The couple's efforts have ensured that their sons' legacy "lives on", Mrs Brown said.

'It was just us'

When she became pregnant in the summer of 2021, she and her husband were overjoyed.

But when Mrs Brown was 16 weeks pregnant, the couple learned that their conjoined twins would not survive the pregnancy and they decided to have a termination for medical reasons. She had to deliver the twins two days after the termination.

Mrs Brown says the Snowdrop Suite, the maternity bereavement room that they used, gave them much-needed privacy and time to grieve. She delivered the twins in the suite just after midnight and the couple stayed with them until the afternoon.

"It was just us in there and the world was happening outside," she says.

The George Eliot Hospital's revamped rooms have been soundproofed and redecorated. The soundproofing means that bereaved parents cannot hear babies on the nearby labour ward.

The Snowdrop Suite now also has a double bed to make overnight stays more comfortable.

University Hospital in Coventry also opened a soundproofed room for parents delivering stillborn babies last month and has plans for a full maternity bereavement suite.

NHS England does not mandate that hospitals have maternity bereavement rooms and individual trusts decide whether to provide this facility.

'Reunited, almost'

Mrs Brown says that all hospitals should have maternity bereavement rooms, because "it is not fair" to place women who experience baby loss on a labour ward with those who have live babies.

The couple's fundraising drive for the George Eliot appeal included coffee mornings and raffles. Some donations were unexpected - when Mrs Brown got a tattoo to commemorate her twins, the tattoo artist told her to donate his fee.

Mrs Brown is proud that she made it back into the Snowdrop Suite for the opening event. When the couple dropped off their fundraising cheque at the hospital on a previous trip, she couldn't face going any further in than the reception desk.

"We walked in there and it was like I was back with [the twins], because that's the last time I was there - when we said goodbye," she says of re-entering the room.

"It just felt like I was back with them again, like we were reunited, almost."