MP calls for every new maternity unit to have bereavement suite
Every new maternity unit should have a bereavement suite so grieving parents can 'process that pain with privacy and peace', an MP has said.
Rosie Wrighting warned MPs that the experience of baby loss was 'made more difficult' if parents were 'surrounded by mothers and families celebrating new life'.
The MP for Kettering, who said she was born eight weeks early, proposed the Maternity Units (Requirement for Bereavement Suite) Bill, which if agreed to would require new units to have a dedicated bereavement facility.
'For anyone who is experiencing the loss of a baby, it is already one of the most difficult times in their life,' Ms Wrighting told the Commons.
'It's made more difficult when they experience this in a maternity ward in their hospital surrounded by mothers and families celebrating new life.
'There is no number of new facilities that can take that pain away but for parents where the local hospital has a dedicated bereavement suite, away from the main labour ward, they can process that pain with privacy and peace.'
In her speech, Ms Wrighting praised staff at Kettering General Hospital's Rockingham Wing, where she was born, who she said 'help people go through one of the most difficult experiences anyone can imagine, and they continue to do this despite years of underfunding and understaffing'.
The Northamptonshire MP said the hospital – where there are plans for a new bereavement suite as part of a Rockingham Wing extension – was where her 'mum fought for her life after a complicated and traumatic birth which was made even more difficult as she was surrounded by happy and healthy mothers and their babies'.
She described a suite as a 'safe, separate space where families are not coming face-to-face with other pregnant women and newborn babies while going through such a heartbreaking time'.
According to the stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands, 13 families a day lose their babies before, during or shortly after birth.
'So, this is bigger than Kettering or Northamptonshire,' Ms Wrighting said, and added that she had looked at fundraising website JustGiving before her speech to find it 'full of appeals from every corner of the country for funding for new facilities, specialist counselling or trained midwives for bereavement services'.
She told MPs: 'I can't even begin to express the admiration I have for parents who are taking their pain and channelling it into making things better for those who come after them.'
Ms Wrighting's Bill will be listed for a second reading debate on May 16.
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