Baby loss awareness week is recognised across the world, and hopes to help break the silence behind baby and pregnancy loss. Thousands of little ones are taken too soon across the planet and the event hopes to give people the chance to remember those babies and tries to allow parents and their loved ones to talk about the issues free from guilt and judgement.
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00:00 So we've done a Baby Loss Memorial display for the last five or six years.
00:05 It started off quite small and it's grown year on year.
00:10 So each individual heart is on display and can be seen quite prominently.
00:16 Baby Loss Awareness Week is so important to thousands of parents
00:20 across not just Wales or the UK but the world.
00:23 It's celebrated annually and gives mums and dads a chance to share their experiences
00:27 without the stigma behind speaking about such an emotional issue.
00:30 So the week is about trying to break the stigma surrounding baby loss
00:37 and to get people talking about it so you know people that do unfortunately suffer losses
00:42 because they are far more frequent than people realise
00:45 can feel comfortable having conversations about their babies.
00:54 Fian's Gift started out as a way of fundraising money for screenings for pregnancies to find
00:58 irregularities like Edwards Syndrome, something that in 2018 wasn't available under the NHS.
01:04 Now it's freely available, the charity focuses on other fundraising activities
01:08 and raising awareness of baby and pregnancy loss.
01:10 Our main reason for starting the charity was basically to educate people
01:17 because we wanted to try and avoid people having the shock that we did
01:22 finding out that our baby was being diagnosed with a condition that we didn't know existed.
01:28 Finding out as early as possible in any subsequent pregnancies whether you know
01:34 another Edwards baby was a really really key thing so
01:38 being able to subsidise towards private screening for that was massive.
01:42 Many people wouldn't realise that up to one in four pregnancies doesn't make it to full term
01:47 so hundreds of mums around the world suffer the same harrowing fate
01:51 and Sarah hopes to help people talk about the issue and help ease the difficulties surrounding it.
01:55 And I think people think that the idea is the week is about mums and dads that have lost babies
02:05 it's not, it's to start the conversation for people that haven't been through a loss
02:13 to understand that it's okay to talk about babies that are no longer here
02:18 you know it's okay to let people that have suffered a loss show their emotions
02:23 and to not feel awkward when somebody mentions their babies because for me personally it took
02:30 me it took me a while to sort of understand that it was okay for me to talk about Ffion to other
02:37 people because I was always worried that other people would get upset and realistically that was my loss.
02:44 On Sunday thousands of people across the world will light a candle at 7pm
02:48 for an hour to remember all those babies who were taken too soon
02:52 so it's hoped that around the globe for 24 hours people can take a moment to think about the babies
02:57 mothers and fathers whose lives together were taken away.
03:00 James B. Watkins, Local TV.