Selby couple encourage others to speak about baby loss
Hayley and Neil's twin daughters died and were stillborn last August
Families across North Yorkshire are urging people to break the stigma around miscarriage and baby loss.
Alya & Aleah died shortly after laser ablation surgery to treat Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome, and were born in York Hospital last August, at 25 weeks gestation.
Their Mum Hayley Patrick-Copeland from Selby wants to encourage others to speak more openly about their loss:
"They are part of our family, they always will be, you know, we do things to mark their anniversaries and celebrate them and I just think it is so important to open up that conversation."
"Grief destroys you, it really does, when your children die, it's one of the things that everyone would agree is just the worst thing, earth shattering, world crushing thing you could ever imagine and you fall to pieces."
"A family isn't always the whole picture that you see in front of you, we found it just means the world to us include Alya and Aleah, it's of course very personal but a lot of people would just give anything to have their children included."
The couple want to make a difference to the Baby Loss community, and felt that Baby Loss Awareness Week in October offers the ideal opportunity to host a charity ball, to honour all the babies gone too soon and celebrate them, and to also raise awareness and some funds for charity. The event on Sunday (15 October) is in aid of 4Louis, a national charity that provides memory boxes to hospitals, to help parents make precious memories with their babies and children.
Hayley tells us: “Being gifted the memory box when we went into hospital to give birth to the girls was amazing. In the most heart-breaking time of your life, putting one foot in front of the other is hard enough, so having the guidance from the box about how we could make memories was so special and made such a difference. You can’t think straight when your children have died, and we are so grateful we were able to collect locks of the girls’ hair, make hand and footprints, imprints and more. These are the most treasured things we possess, which we cherish so dearly, and being able to take photos, having teddies to give the girls and a story to read them meant such a lot. Words can’t describe how valuable the box was.”
Links to help
If you’re affected by issues raised in this article, there is help available from Sands