The mothers who cuddled, bathed and dressed their babies for weeks after they died: Some may find these pictures disturbing. But these women's stories are both heart-rending and uplifting
- WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: Pictures below show dead children with parents
- As recently as the 1980s still-born children were taken away before being held
- But changing attitudes and new technology has now altered medical approach
- CuddleCot, with electric cooling system, allows mothers to take babies home
- New approach now widespread and 92 per cent of hospitals offer CuddleCots
Lynsey spent 15 days with her still-born son Rory before saying goodbye for good
Every parent expects to be woken up during the night by the cries of their baby. But after putting their five-month-old daughter in the cot at the end of their bed, Jodie and Matthew McAtamney-Greenwood had to survive those dark hours with a terrible, aching silence.
At 6am, when they went to lift Trinity out of her cot, there were none of the usual coos. Only complete stillness.
Trinity, who was born with an underdeveloped heart, had suffered a cardiac arrest three weeks before. On the date of her death in August 2015, she was one of at least 15 babies who died that day in the UK just before, during or within six months of birth.
Yet despite the agony, Jodie and Matthew still believe that taking her lifeless body home the day before her funeral — in a specially cooled bassinet that preserves infants’ bodies — helped them begin to come to terms with their loss.
‘It was incredibly hard watching her lying lifeless in her cot when, a few weeks earlier, she’d been rolling on her side and playing with her little hands,’ says Jodie, 25.
‘This time, we put her into her cot in a wicker basket that was fitted with a cooling pad to keep her body cold, so we could spend more time with her. Now, instead of being warm and rosy-cheeked, she was not frozen but was cool to the touch, as if she’d been taken for a walk on a winter’s day.
‘All night, I sat up in bed watching her, thinking “Maybe, you’ll surprise us and open your eyes”, yet knowing that wasn’t going to happen. But as painful as it was, I’m still so glad that Trinity was home with us for that last night. It’s where she belonged.’
Just a few years ago, babies who died were usually spirited away by medical staff, who said it was ‘for the best’. And as recently as the 1980s, some mothers never saw their stillborn child because it was seen as kinder not to allow them to bond in the first place.
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But thanks to changing attitudes to child bereavement, as well as the CuddleCot — which contains an electric cooling system attached to a mat to keep the body temperature low — mothers are taking their babies home to care for them in the days before their funerals.
Often concealed in bassinets to give the appearance of a living baby sleeping, CuddleCots enable parents to spend time with their child before their final parting. The baby can be held, dressed and taken for walks like a living child.
Many people were surprised, though, when the widespread use of the devices was revealed last week.
It came to light when 21-year-old Charlotte Szakacs and her husband Attila, 28, from York, told how they had used the equipment to care for their daughter Evelyn for two weeks after she died due to a chromosome disorder a month after birth.
Lynsey Bell and her husband Mark, who also have three other children, kept their stillborn son Rory with them for two weeks so they could say proper goodbyes to him
So, are parents simply being allowed to live in denial? Or, as macabre as this sounds, can delaying the inevitable decay of a baby’s body — and allowing families to say goodbye in their own time — help them deal with their loss?
The evidence is that it does indeed help. A recent review of the research in the journal Birth found that removing a child from its parents too early leaves them not only unable to process their grief, but with the gnawing feeling that their child never mattered.
As result of such findings, 92 per cent of British hospitals offer CuddleCots to bereaved families.
A growing number of hospices and funeral homes also supply the cots, which were launched six years ago by a Midlands company and cost about £1,500 each.
Erica Stewart, a bereavement support specialist at stillbirth and neonatal death charity Sands, says: ‘In years gone by, keeping the babies away was seen as a way to protect the mothers, who were often told to go home and try for another child.
Charlotte and Attila Szakacs with their desperately ill daughter Evelyn
‘Thanks to advances in psychology and counselling, we know that when parents have good bereavement care and can stay with their children, it has a positive impact on their future mental health.’
Some parents can stay with their baby for up to a month, says Erica, as there is no immediate deadline for burial nor any infection risks from the body of a newborn baby.
‘It normally just comes to a natural end, with the parents knowing when it’s time to say goodbye,’ she says. ‘That time spent together can help any mother — whether they have lost a baby at birth or several months afterwards. There is no hierarchy in grief.’
Jodie, a lifeguard from Chessington, Surrey, knows the pain of both only too well. She lost her first daughter, Serenity, in April 2014, when, for unexplained reasons, she died in the womb.
A refrigerated bassinet allowed Jodie to keep Serenity with her in hospital for three days.
Then, with unbearable poignancy, after she and husband Matthew donated a CuddleCot for other families in memory of their daughter, they used one again when their second daughter, Trinity, died from an unrelated heart defect.
‘We do wonder: “Why us?” ’ says Jodie. ‘There is no answer, so we just have to live each day as it comes.
‘With Serenity, I didn’t want to see her for 12 hours because I didn’t know what to expect. But when I held her, I found it comforting because, though she was dead, she was still my baby to care for.
Lynsey pictured with her children Daisy, 10, Max, 7 and Poppy, 4, said that having Rory for those extra four days gave them closure
‘With Trinity, it was different because I got to see her smile, sing her nursery rhymes and make silly voices to make her laugh.’
The family were on a trip to Wales when Trinity died suddenly. Jodie visited her child’s body every day at the hospital mortuary, but on the night before her funeral, she decided to bring her daughter home.
‘She was in the white wicker basket she was going to be buried in the next day. We had our friends and family come and spend time cuddling her. I held her a lot, because it was the last hug she was ever going to have.’
It’s hard to imagine such agony. Yet Jodie believes having her daughter home again was invaluable.
‘It helped because I would have felt guilty if she hadn’t spent the last night where she belonged,’ she says. ‘I would still rather have that memory of her at home than the memory of seeing the hospital staff trying to resuscitate her.’
Mark and Lynsey, pictured in June last year
Nursery nurse Lynsey Bell agrees. When her son Rory died in August 2014 during childbirth, she and her husband Mark changed his nappy, washed him, sang to him, cuddled him and read him stories for the 18 days until his funeral.
The day before the service, they took him to Lynsey’s parents’ home, where he was at their side for their final night together.
‘People are so wrong if they think parents are playing mummy and daddy with dead babies — it’s not like that at all,’ says Lynsey, 33, from Newcastle upon Tyne.
‘We’re not living in some fantasy world. We know the baby is no longer there.
‘But having Rory for those days helped give us closure. By the time we said goodbye, we knew every last inch of him. You want to take in every little ounce of them because you know you’re never going to see them again. That time is precious because it’s all we have.’
Psychologist Dr Deborah Davis, author of Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving The Death Of Your Baby, agrees.
‘Parents get to be parents, and express their love in physical ways, such as admiring features, bathing, dressing and sleeping with their little one,’ she says.
‘Setting their own pace offers parents a sense of control, which can minimise the trauma of letting go.’
So it was for Josie Pavey after her daughter, Billy-Rose, died aged six months in December 2012.
When Rory died in August 2014 during childbirth, Lynsey and Mark Bell changed his nappy, washed him, sang to him, cuddled him and read him stories for the 18 days until his funeral
At first, Billy-Rose was not expected to survive her birth. At 34 weeks pregnant, Josie, a healthcare training consultant from Frome, Somerset, was told her baby was suffering from hydranencephaly, a condition in which the brain is not fully formed.
In an almost unimaginable stroke of misfortune, when her partner Ben learned the news, he suffered a fit, banged his head and went into a coma. He died a week later, seven weeks before Billy-Rose was born in June 2012.
It made Josie, 45, all the more determined to make her short time together with her daughter as memorable as possible. Every day, she catalogued her tiny child’s life, giving her a new experience, whether it was putting her feet on the grass or smelling flowers.
Billy-Rose died of pneumonia in Josie’s arms on December 14, but Josie was still determined to give her little girl her first Christmas.
Given her own room at the funeral home, Billy-Rose was put in a CuddleCot and Josie visited her every day, decorating the room with her toys.
‘It may sound morbid, but I wanted that Christmas with her,’ says Josie. ‘When your baby dies and you wake up every morning to find they aren’t there, it’s like falling into an abyss.
‘So I looked forward to visiting her and spending more time with her, chatting or holding her hand.
‘On Christmas Day, I opened her presents for her. I read her a new book, Guess How Much I Love You?, and my family came to visit.
‘That little bit of extra time helped me to get used to the fact that Billy-Rose was gone. It doesn’t take away the pain, but it does make that transition a bit more gentle. I kissed her every day she was alive. When I kissed her in death, her skin was like marble.
‘It helped me acknowledge she was not there any more and that I had to let her body go. I still look back on it as a beautiful time.’
Mel Scott, an occupational therapist from Somerset who organises bereavement training days, says allowing parents time with their dead babies helps them come to terms with the loss.
The day before the service, they took him to Lynsey’s parents’ home, where he was at their side for their final night together
Mel, 37, who lost her son Finley in 2009, found it helped to be able to bathe, dress and read to him after his death. However, when he started to change physically, Mel knew it was time to let him go.
‘The fact that he had changed, that his face and nails had become purple and black, helped me recognise he was gone. It was the only thing that made seeing his coffin go into the dirt bearable.
‘Until you have been in that position, you don’t know how you would respond. The important thing is choice. When your baby dies, you feel as if every choice has been taken away.
‘Even now, I have countless parents contacting me via my charity, Towards Tomorrow Together, to say they aren’t able to heal because they didn’t get to bathe, dress or kiss their baby.
‘Those regrets hurt so much for many years after the loss.’
Josie Pavey with Billy-Rose, who died aged six months in 2012
For Corporal Michael McLeod , 27, and Jillian, 28, who lost their first baby, Lucy, at 30 weeks on December 27, the pain of her loss is still raw — but they believe the three days they spent with her at home before her funeral will, in time, make it easier.
When Jillian came round from anaesthetic after an operation to try to save her and her unborn child, one of her first fears was that someone would try to take her lifeless baby away.
But Michael says he is grateful that he and his wife were able to keep their child with them until Jillian was ready to let her go.
‘Lucy was brought to me in a blanket while Jillian was still in surgery,’ says Michael. ‘I was blown away by how perfect she was. She was so tiny, 3lb 11oz, and she looked just like me.
‘At first, Jillian was confused. When I’d made sure she understood that Lucy had passed away, I brought her over.’
For five days, they kept Lucy with them. Then, on December 31, the couple took Lucy home.
Michael says: ‘We took Lucy straight up to her nursery, where we laid the CuddleCot in the crib I’d put together a few days before.
‘We didn’t want to pick her up too much because we knew her body needed to stay cool. Most of the time we kept her in her nursery — but I never closed the door or turned off the light. I didn’t want her lying in the dark.’
Michael says that that time at home with Lucy helped them to recognise when to let go.
‘You could see from the bruising and discoloration that was developing on Lucy’s body that it was time to say goodbye,’ he says.
‘Though the heartache was incomprehensible, for us that time with Lucy was invaluable.’
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