Name: Nicky Heppenstall

Organisation:

Award Category: Volunteer Of The Year

Sponsored By:

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My Plea:

My name is Nicky. I’m a parent, a bereaved parent, and a photographer.

I’m also a volunteer, a co-founder, and a trustee for Remember My Baby.

I became involved with baby-loss as a result of being supported by Derby Sands after my daughter Kim was born still at home in 2001.

I became a photographer as a result of discovering Remembrance Photography back in 2009.

I became a co-founder of Remember My Baby after it became clear that there was a specific need for a dedicated UK charity to provide remembrance photography to bereaved parents in 2014.

Kim was stillborn at home, I was hospital phobic and had had a traumatic hospital birth previously, so it was very important to me to be at home if at all possible. I later joined the committee of Derby Sands which was in danger of folding, and stepped away from a now very active group sometime later to concentrate on building my photography business. I turned professional in 2010 specifically to be able to provide remembrance photography to parents like me, like us.

Unfortunately, I was finally diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS/ME) in 2012, so I continued part-time with my business because full-time simply wasn’t an option.

I’ve risen to personal challenges as a result of my involvement with RMB – a trauma when I was a toddler left me with a longstanding phobia of hospitals, but I can now freely walk into an acute unit to meet a bereaved family and their baby, or to meet with a Bereavement Midwife and their team to introduce them to RMB without a second thought. I certainly never expected to be having a cuppa with midwives in a staff room whilst waiting for a mum to be ready for me to meet her and her little one.

Being painfully shy as a child and suffering low self-esteem and self-confidence, I never expected to be delivering training to a group of photographers or presenting about remembrance photography to a group of midwives and other health professionals, and I’m still very nervous to do so, but the importance of what we do for families through RMB is so much bigger than me – that’s my motivation for going into hospitals and standing up and speaking about RMB.

My role within RMB encompasses email and admin support tasks, social media management, archiving and monitoring of sessions, coordinating RMB’s presence at major national and regional trade events, and supporting both volunteers and fellow co-founders in the smooth, day to day running of RMB. I wound down my business to next to nothing 2 years ago to be able to devote more time to RMB because I have to carefully manage my activity and energy levels. I have to factor in recovery time from trade shows and training days and pacing is critical the rest of the time to manage the CFS.

However, I’m told that I still put others first before my own needs; I’m always willing to help any of the team, I reach out to volunteers needing extra moral support or hand holding, both through their experiences, and also in navigating RMB’s policies and procedures. I’m told that I ‘truly have a solid heart of gold’.

I truly feel that being part of an organisation that facilitates beautiful images of precious lost babies for families in the darkest of hours is the silver lining in my stillbirth cloud.

It’s an honour and a privilege.

What Others Have Said

I nominate Nicky because of the tireless work she puts into Remember My Baby, keeping it running smoothly and co-ordinating with the volunteers, she’s an incredible woman, even more so because she does all this around her chronic illness (ME or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) I personally can’t say enough good things about Nicky and I dearly hope that she is recognised for the amount of time and effort she puts into RMB.