Name:

Organisation: Neonatal Unit, Ayrshire Maternity Unit

Award Category: Outstanding Team Care

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My Plea:

Breaking bad news to families and helping parents to cope with their dying baby is always very difficult. Despite this here in Neonatal Services at Ayrshire Maternity Unit we strive to help and support the parents in every way to care for their dying baby ensuring that they form lasting memories which will comfort them as they embark on their heart breaking journey.

Neonatal Services is integral to Ayrshire Maternity Unit which has a delivery rate of approximately 3,300 each year with an average of 400 of those babies being admitted to our Neonatal Unit. Fortunately for some it is only for a few hours but for many it can be for days, weeks and months.

Sadly some of our babies are born too early or too sick and parents do not get the opportunity of experiencing the joy of taking their baby home.

Every baby, their parents and their family matters to us and we strive to ensure that regardless of the outcome for their baby that we make their time with their baby precious and memorable.

Being partners in care from the beginning of their baby’s journey is pivotal for all parents to bond with their little bundle of joy. This is even more important if their time with their new born baby is limited.

We actively support and encourage parents, siblings and extended family to be with their baby whenever they want and for as long as they want. As we know for some families this will be very precious time that they won’t ever get back. For too many they will never hear their baby cry or see their baby smile or hear their baby laugh.

On admission to our unit a personalised, handwritten baby diary is started by the nursing staff for all our babies. This captures the good and the not so good days and the journey that our babies have.

They create tangible memories and often include an abundance of photographs which we know mean so much to our parents.

All staff put a lot of thought, empathy and compassion into what they write in the diaries often talking through with their peers so that they know that get it right.

The diaries are a small part of helping our grieving families to make memories and like some other neonatal units we help the parent to fill a memory box with precious keepsakes of their baby.

At this time we strive to ensure that parents have privacy and support and consider at all times each families individual needs always treating them with dignity and respect.

It is crucial to support parents and families to spend as much special and precious time with their baby to get to know them and make those precious memories in whatever way they can.

Our families draw immense comfort in their journey of heart breaking grief from this and it is our belief that this better prepares parents and their families as they face this life long journey of grief.

As a team we are deeply honoured to have firstly been nominated and then shortlisted for this very prestigious award and draw great comfort that Donna, James and all their family, like many others that we have supported over the years, felt that the care that they received during this time was outstanding.

Caroline Blake, Clinical Midwife Manager Neonatal and Maternity In Patient Services
NHS Ayrshire and Arran
September 2019

What Others Have Said

It’s been 6 years and we have never forgotten everything they did for us. We were given privacy and time with her, a chance to wash her and dress her (which meant so much considering we have missed out on so much too). We never got the chance to see her smile, hear her laugh or cry, and much more. They took plenty of photos for us, including ones of the whole family with her. We were given a full album, a memory box and additional little gifts. Now and again they would come in the room and ask to see her and hold her, which meant a lot as they were still acknowledging the little person she was. One of the midwives had written a message in her ‘diary’ as though it was Lucia speaking to us.