Name: Louise Zeniou

Organisation: Cradle

Award Category: Awareness Advocate

Sponsored By:

Voting Is Now Closed

My Plea:

Cradle
My name is Louise Zeniou, I am the Founder of a newly founded, national charitable organisation called Cradle. We are a team of early pregnancy loss ambassadors, providing a range of baby loss support services to the NHS for bereaved parents.

My Story
In May 2015 I lost my baby due to a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.
I was taken to A&E at Southport Hospital, and within hours was transferred to Ormskirk Hospital for emergency surgery. Following my surgery, I was transferred back to a private room on Gynae, surrounded by my anxious looking family. I was left without my left fallopian tube and a much hoped for baby. I was discharged the next day and took 5 weeks off work to physically recover. I became pregnant again later in the year and my daughter was born in 2016.

In October 2017 I noticed an request on Facebook from the NBCP https://nbcpathway.org.uk/
who were inviting feedback for literature created providing guidelines for continuity of bereavement care in the NHS. I sent my recommendations for change to the Ectopic Pregnancy literature and received an email to say that my recommendations had been used. I felt passionately that ectopic pregnancy along with all types of early pregnancy loss was unique and should be recognised as such by the health care profession.

In October 2018, I set up a Twitter Account called @ectopicmy to raise awareness of Ectopic Pregnancy, and to offer peer support to anyone affected by Ectopic Pregnancy. The account quickly grew to 1000 followers, it became a safe space for other women and anyone affected by ectopic pregnancy to find each other, and to share their own experiences of baby loss.

We worked hard to raise awareness of the symptoms of Ectopic Pregnancy which often go unnoticed and as a result can be fatal. (Did you know that shoulder tip pain, sometimes when lying down is a symptom of ectopic pregnancy?)

In January 2019 I was invited to join the Bereavement Focus Group at Ormskirk Hospital and started working together with health care professionals, mortuary services, Lighthouses Therapy Services and the Hospital Chaplin. My role is to offer advice from the perspective as a bereaved parent who was previously cared for at Ormskirk Hospital and to offer advice to health care professionals in any way needed.

I began working very closely with Wendy Hicks, Matron on Gynae Ward at Ormskirk Hospital. I decided that I wanted to do something for other bereaved parents who in the future would be cared for by Ormskirk following the loss of a baby to Ectopic Pregnancy.

I researched the services currently provided by other charities and identified that there was a need for something to provide immediate physical comfort and support signposting during or following baby loss in hospital. Like many women who are admitted to hospital for early pregnancy loss care, I was admitted without any toiletries, and although having these thing would not have taken away the pain of losing my baby, they would have allowed me to feel a little more like me in those first few hours post surgery. The idea of a Comfort bag was born and I committed to donating twenty bags to Ormskirk Hospital Gynae as a one off gesture in memory of the baby that I lost.

I posted on social media that I was looking for donations for the project. However I began receiving daily messages and emails from women who had also been affected by Ectopic Pregnancy who began offering to help with the project and to fundraise for the Comfort bags for Ormskirk. Within a few weeks a team of fifteen women across the UK had joined the project, however we also received requests from women who had experienced other types of early pregnancy loss too.

It began very clear, very quickly, that women with experience of different types of early pregnancy wanted to be become involved and although my objective is, and will always be to raise awareness of the danger of Ectopic Pregnancy, I felt a huge responsibility to provide a space for anyone affected by every type of early pregnancy loss.

The initial plan to provide twenty Comfort bags for Ormskirk hospital was going to be the start of a national project, giving the opportunity for anyone affected by early pregnancy loss to bring comfort to bereaved parents at the Hospital of their choice, in memory of the babies they themselves had lost.

From this, the early pregnancy loss ambassador role was created, and by the end of May 2019 the ambassador team reached twenty women.
We began planning as a national team, collecting donations for comfort bags, making partnerships with retailers and spreading the word that to us, every pregnancy matters.

In June 2019 we rebranded from My Ectopic Pregnancy to Cradle, we secured the backing of international and award winning healthcare advertising agency Havas Lynx who created the look, feel and tone of Cradle. In July 2019 we launched our HCP service at the Liverpool Womens baby loss conference.

We launched our comfort bag project on the 5th September 2019 at Ormskirk Hospital and handed over our first set of early pregnancy loss comfort bags to Matron Wendy Hicks for bereaved parents who will receive care on Gynae Ward during or following baby loss.

We will be launching our service officially at the Liverpool Womens Hospital on the 26th September 2019 and for Baby Loss Awareness Week, we are planning to launch at eight other NHS Hospitals across Cornwall, Bedford, London, Essex, Nottingham, Glasgow, Kings Lynn and Sheffield. We expect to be in every NHS trust by 2023, and are proud to say our NHS Ambassador role is being created in response to the demand for our services by HCP’s.

Who are we today?
Cradle is a national charitable organisation with the following structure

Structure
Louise Zeniou Founder
Adam Jackson Trustee and Community Project Director
Jon Chapman Trustee and Executive Creative Director at Havas Healthcare Advertising Agency
Ambassador Team – National
Fundraisers – Angel Makers, Comfort Bag Sponsors, NHS staff who may carry out Fundraising
Retail Ambassadors – Retailers who donate products to our comfort bags, GoJute are our official bag supplier

Objectives
Our long term objective is to raise funds and apply for grants to provide six sessions of fast track baby loss counselling for bereaved parents following discharge from the NHS.
To donate comfort bags to bereaved parents during their stay in hospital, the bags are for mum and partner, or mum and attending companion who may also benefit from the contents of the bags (each bag has two toothbrushes plus lots of other practical and beautiful things, the most important thing in the bag Is our signposting leaflet).

To provide an opportunity for any ambassador to link with their chosen NHS trust, and to deliver Cradle core services
To provide a platform for any ambassador to start any community projects or support groups under the Cradle brand, which can be linked with the NHS
Create a community where anyone affected by pregnancy loss can return to for support, either on social media or to join our community projects including Cradle Football teams which are launching in 2019 (#cradlefootball) and plant therapy which is launching in 2020 (#cradlesunflowers)

Cradle today
Our ability to provide a service to an NHS Trust is based on the availability of an ambassador in the local area, who has chosen to support a particular Trust. Our ambassadors offer their experience as a bereaved parent which we hope may be used for future training, policy review, and in the design of support services provided by the NHS.

We are planning our Youtube channel, website, and collaborative projects with a range of other charitable organisations including Aching Arms, 4Louis, Beyond Bea and Cherry Blossom Support Services. We chose to promote other charities and to ensure that every gynae ward that Cradle works with promotes the services of all other early pregnancy loss charities, and that their products and memory making services are available along side our comfort bags.

We have secured a Jute Bag Partner, retail partners and funding. We do not rely on Funding for our comfort bags and everything will continue to be donated, our funds will be used to ensure our leaflets are circulated in every hospital, allowing us to signpost our support services as soon as they are needed, and to provide our fast track counselling services and community projects. Our bags are available for sponsorship creating additional income for fast track counselling.

Raising awareness of early pregnancy loss
You can join us every Sunday night at 9pm as we take over ex Goal Keeper Neville Southall Twitter Account (@NevilleSouthall) to raise awareness of early pregnancy loss and to signpost support for anyone affected by the loss of a baby. Please use the #tweetcradle to follow the discussion.

We join #babylosshour most Tuesdays at 8pm taking part and offering support, as well as having our own Facebook page and support groups, Twitter and Instagram accounts.

Our next focus
To spread the Cradle message, that EVERY PREGNANCY MATTERS

Cradle is for you, for your families, for the babies that we have lost. Cradle is for future bereaved parents that may be planning today for the arrival of their baby.

For as long as there is baby loss, my hope is that there will be Cradle.

Louise Zeniou
Founder

Cradle
louise@earlypregnancyloss.co.uk

Huge thank you to everyone involved in Cradle and huge thank you to our Cradle Ambassador Chelsi Moore for creating our video for the butterfly awards.

What Others Have Said

Louise is incredibly dedicated to her cause of supporting those who have suffered from ectopic pregnancy. This is an area of support in baby loss that is much needed and Louise is working on a variety of projects with My Ectopic Pregnancy to both help raise awareness and provide valuable support to those in need. Her organisation officially launches this year – but she has worked on creating support groups and is working on comfort bags for people going through ectopic loss, as well as helping to set up a football team! She works so hard and I think she deserves this nomination.

https://youtu.be/6eaY5bGF_S8