As Janine Norris enjoys Christmas dinner with her excited children there will be a deep ache in her heart at an empty space at the table.
Daughter Sylvie was stillborn eight years ago and the joy at seeing Rory, 7, and Adara, 5, tear open their presents will be tinged with pain that their sister will never do so with them.
The festive period can be particularly difficult for parents like Janine and husband Callum who have lost a baby during pregnancy or shortly after birth.
Janine told us her family’s story to raise awareness of the Sands winter appeal to support the work of the stillbirth and neonatal death charity in helping bereaved parents, improving care and funding research.
She described Sands as a lifeline and said: “If we didn’t have Sands I genuinely don’t know how I would have survived.”
Sylvie was born asleep on February 1, 2013.
Just weeks earlier Janine, then five months pregnant, and Callum had celebrated Christmas thrilled to be expecting their first child.
Janine said: “That Christmas I was pregnant with her was probably the happiest Christmas I’ve ever had. She was starting to move around, it was really, really lovely.”
The Christmas after losing Sylvie there was no tree, no decorations and the couple closed the curtains – just seeing a Christmas advert on television would make Janine break down.
Their heartbreak began at Janine’s 28-week check-up when a scan revealed no heartbeat.
When Janine said she hadn’t felt her baby move that day the midwife tried to reassure her, chuckling at her first-time mum nerves. Then she stopped laughing, unable to detect a heartbeat.
A sonographer confirmed the devastating news and Janine said: “At that moment, I felt almost like Alice in Wonderland; I felt like I’d just dropped through the world. Everything turned upside down.”
A pink memory box
The next day Janine delivered Sylvie in the Victoria Hospital, Kirkcaldy.
Distraught, bewildered and shocked, she and Callum left the hospital clutching only a pink memory box with some photographs and a lock of their tiny daughter’s hair.
For months Janine, who works for two charities, barely left the house.
She said: “It destroyed me. I cried for months and months on end, pretty much the full first year.”
But a friend had told her about Sands and the couple attended a family day that summer.
They began attending monthly support meetings and when Janine fell pregnant with Rory there was help to deal with the emotions that brought.
Janine, now chair of the charity’s Fife group, said: “Having people to talk to and having that safe place was just absolutely incredible, a lifesaver really.
Seeing the mums up dancing, I thought ‘how can they do that?’ Almost eight years down the line I’m up dancing now.”
“You could go in there and rant, be angry, cry your eyes out, you could sit and say nothing, talk about your holidays, it didn’t matter.
“It was hopeful, you got to see other parents who had gone on and had other children, that were living a happy normal life.
“I remember at one event seeing the mums up dancing and I thought ‘how can they do that?’ Almost eight years down the line I’m up dancing now.”
This Christmas the family will attend Sands’ annual service, which Janine now organises.
She said: “We get a little bauble to honour our babies and we write a message on them and hang them on the tree. You see the tree absolutely covered in baubles and you know that every bauble is a baby that’s being missed.”
At home there are more baubles on the tree for Sylvie and her stocking hook, which hangs alongside Rory’s and Adara’s, has a star on it, her symbol.
Rory and Adara are excited for the big day.
We have our own way of remembering our babies at Christmas, making sure there’s that tiny heart-shaped space carved out for them.”
Janine said: “I can’t wait to see their faces on Christmas Day.
“We carve Christmas between the two, we have our Sylvie time and the rest of it is for Rory and Adara.
“Sylvie has a bench in Pittencrieff Park in Dunfermline and we go along on Christmas Eve or Boxing Day and take hot chocolate and have a wee think about her. The kids get sparklers.”
Christmas – like birthdays and other anniversaries – is challenging for all the parents Sands supports, Janine said.
“You are always conscious of that missing space at the table.
“All the parents have their own wee traditions; we all have our own way of remembering our babies at Christmas, just making sure there’s that tiny heart-shaped space carved out for them.”
The facts:
- Every day 14 babies – over 5,000 a year – are stillborn or die within their first few months in the UK
- 250,000 known pregnancies end in miscarriage each year
- It costs Sands over £10,000 a week to deliver its bereavement support alone.
Urging people to support the Sands winter appeal, the charity’s chief executive Clea Harmer said: “Every parent expects to bring their baby home, but tragically we know for thousands of people every year this is not the case.
“Sands is committed to ensuring anyone affected has the dedicated support they need.
“But, over 18 months since the first lockdown, the landscape remains challenging.”
Sands has a phone helpline – 0808 164 3332 – email helpline helpline@sands.org.uk and more information is available on its website.
