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My Plea:

It’s hard to get a feel for why people label you ‘inspirational’. My first thought when I was first nominated for this award was that I wouldn’t be nominated for it if Henry hadn’t died. I wouldn’t even be part of this community but for that tragedy, of course. When your baby dies, all control is ripped away from you, and you’re left scrambling to breathe, struggling to put one foot in front of the other, using every last ounce of energy just to get out of bed on a morning.

‘Surviving’ is an art that every bereaved parent has to master – and that is inspirational all by itself. Surviving the loss of your baby is the biggest challenge any parent can face. You don’t get a choice though. I don’t think any of us set out to be ‘inspirational’. Like any other bereaved parent, I just set out to get through our grief – not over it, never over it. Just through it.

Our son Henry was stillborn at 38 weeks on 2nd May, 2014. Two days before he was born, everything was fine, and then our entire world caved in and, in an instant, changed forever. Suddenly we weren’t joining the ‘parent’ club any more. No parent and child sessions, no play dates, no kids’ club. No first day at school. No first game of mini rugby. No first girlfriend, no driving lessons. No graduation, no wedding day.

As the days passed, I reached out to Our Angels, and came to meet some of the most wonderful and caring human beings I could ever wish NOT to meet. I discovered that we were part of a club after all. A club and community I didn’t even know existed, that no-one ever wanted to join, but which is full of the most wonderful and compassionate human beings you could ever wish you’d never met. I reached out to them because I needed to feel normal. I needed to know that people do get through this, that they do survive. The strength I got from knowing them made me realise that I wanted to give something back.

Even as I was getting through it (and still am, four and a half years later) I found myself wanting to make things better for others, to make a difference to other parents facing the same heartache, to give something back to the midwifery profession that faces this impossible challenge of mitigating a family’s grief. Or better still, to help introduce changes to stop families facing this journey in the first place.

It feels weird to be asked to list your ‘achievements’ to ask for votes, when really there are no ‘winners’ in baby loss, but here goes:

By the end of the first support group meeting I attended, I’d taken on the task of getting Our Angels registered charity status, something we achieved in April 2015, shortly before Henry’s first birthday, and shortly after my amazing wife Briony had been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.

“Chris is such an inspirational father, his total commitment to raising awareness of baby loss and organising so much training for healthcare professionals is amazing, he gives up so much time travelling around the country, telling his own story of the tragic loss of his son Henry and the journey him and his lovely wife Briony are going through.
He has taken our charity to an amazing level, helping so many people.”
Diane Kelly, Our Angels

I’ve undertaken a number of fundraising challenges for Our Angels, two-day long canal walks from London to Northampton, Yorkshire 3 Peaks Challenges, and more, raising in the region of £20,000 over the last few years. The fundraising is vital as it provides the resource to enable us to really set about making a change, but I truly believe the key is what we do with the money once we’ve raised it, and what we do with the platform once we’ve got it.

At the beginning of 2016, I was approached to present at the launch of NHS England’s Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle. I’d always been fairly open about our experiences, but standing up in front of a room filled with 250 maternity professionals and trying to inspire and motivate them to implement a new initiative was a whole new level of openness. I found, however, that nothing was more rewarding than influencing maternity professionals to bring about practical change that would lead to babies’ lives being saved.

At the end of the day, the organisers from NHS England gave each delegate a post-it note and asked them to sum the day up in a single word. I cannot begin to explain the sense of pride I felt in my son when I saw that someone had summed up the entire day – at the launch of a major new national initiative – simply with the word ‘Henry’. Bereaved parents don’t always get that many opportunities to feel proud of their children.

Since then I’ve been privileged to present to thousands of midwives and other maternity professionals, student midwives, school students and members of the public, sharing our story and discussing the need for two different focuses – prevention to reduce stillbirth rates and allow more families to take their babies home safely, and high quality bereavement care for those families that don’t. I’ve presented at conferences and study days in Birmingham, Bolton, Harrogate, Kendal, Liverpool, Leeds, London, Manchester, Salford, and Sheffield.

“I’m totally blown away by Chris, his passion, drive, and utter commitment to supporting other families, raising awareness of baby loss through his own grief. His powerful passion and energy has moved audiences to want to do better for bereaved families, inspired them, helped professionals to prepare to care for families.”
Nick Kerry, Bereavement Midwife, North Lincolnshire and Goole NHS Foundation Trust

I also spearheaded Our Angels’ decision to run our own conferences on baby loss and bereavement care – the first at the University of Bradford in Feb 2017, the second at the University of York in Feb 2018. We ensured that these full days of training – featuring doctors, midwives, charity workers, researchers, and most importantly parents – were provided entirely free of charge to delegates. I was honoured to speak at both of these as well. All the presentations were professionally filmed and are available as educational resources on YouTube. Our third conference is being held at Birmingham City University on 13 Oct 2018. My presentation at the York conference can be viewed by clicking on the photo below:

“Chris speaks candidly and transparently about Henry’s death and birth, yet with such love, and in a way that both uplifts and inspires the listeners. In order to make changes to practice, midwives and student midwives MUST be INSPIRED; and Chris does just that whilst creating a legacy in his son’s memory. He totally deserves recognition for his efforts.”
Gemma Brice, Vice-President, University of Bradford Midwifery Society 2016-17

Education of professionals and students is SO important – not just to ensure that they provide compassionate care following the loss of a baby, but also to bring about changes in practice that help more babies arrive safely, reducing the amount of bereavement care needed.

To that end, in autumn 2017, I was the driving force behind Our Angels’ decision to invest nearly £10,000 to fund MAMA Academy Wellbeing Wallets for a year for every pregnant mum in Bradford, Harrogate, York and Scarborough. Education does not stop with midwives, or other maternity professionals, or even students. Education has to include parents too. These wallets provide a fantastic, simple, user-friendly and easily accessible source of information for pregnant mums and those around them, and I am hugely proud that we were able to provide these wallets for around 13,000 women in 2017-18. I’m also delighted that all the trusts have seen the benefit and budgeted to continue to supply them to women going forward.

“Being a bereaved mother and a midwife, I have seen how both sides of this journey need supporting and Chris absolutely gets this. He works tirelessly to support those who are bereaved and those who are providing the care. Chris will never stop striving for more in the memory of his beautiful boy. I am so proud to call him my friend and I am truly in awe of how committed he is in helping those going through baby loss, those watching someone going through baby loss and those providing care during baby loss.”
Kirsty Nguyen, Holly’s mum

But it’s still not enough to educate professionals and parents, we need to inform and guide wider society as well. So I supported the incredible groundbreaking documentary about stillbirth, Still Loved, and was part of a series of Q&A sessions after cinema screenings all over the north of England. This documentary does a brilliant job of explaining to those who aren’t living this ‘new normal’ the journey that bereaved parents go on. I’m proud to have been involved in this project, and to have been involved in the push to get one of the major TV networks to screen it. To that end I posted on social media to promote a petition to get it screened on the BBC, a post which received over 1000 comments, over 2500 responses, and over 3600 shares – which was partly responsible for a mindblowing 20,000 signatures in the couple of days that followed.

Educating society means educating the people and institutions that influence society too. So when in May 2016, the BBC drama In the Club broadcast outdated and inaccurate information about reduced fetal movements, something needed to be said. So I drafted a letter to the BBC’s Director for Editorial Policy and Standards which was co-signed by, amongst others, representatives of Tommy’s, SANDS, NCT, the Perinatal Institute, Birthrights, the Tommy’s Stillbirth Research Centre, King’s College London, and the Royal College of Midwives. The BBC agreed on the back of this letter to liaise directly with the RCM for expert input on future midwifery based programmes, which hopefully will reduce the incidences of inaccurate and dangerous false information being broadcast.

The commercial world also needs to understand the irrevocable grief experienced by parents following the loss of a baby. It came to my attention that the well-known pregnancy/birth company Emma’s Diary was still contacting bereaved mums via email even after they had repeatedly unsubscribed from their e-mailing list. After putting much pressure on them, their internal investigations discovered that their ‘unsubscribe’ system was not fit for purpose and was only unsubscribing users from some of their emails, not all. Following this discovery, they committed to a complete overhaul of their system for people to unsubscribe from their communications, and to streamline the process to simplify it for parents, especially those seeking to end communication following the devastation of a bereavement. Hopefully this has made life easier for other bereaved parents.

Society needs to know that not only should this subject not be a taboo, but that bereaved parents very often don’t want to hide away or not talk about their experiences. In Baby Loss Awareness Week 2017, I was interviewed for, and co-hosted a phone in on, BBC Radio Five Live’s breakfast show, the country’s biggest news radio programme. The conversation that was started, and the personal experiences of many who phoned in to share their stories, was truly humbling. The programme can be heard by clicking on the photo below:

“Chris is one of the strongest men I have ever had the pleasure to meet. This man is not only inspirational to myself, but to hundreds of other people in this ‘community’.
Chris puts his heart and soul in to helping people. He doesn’t only aid those on this journey on a personal level, but he is one of the very few who will actively try and help people set up new organisations and charities.”
Natalie Oldham, Founder, Otis & Friends

In the last year or so, I’ve also started writing a blog documenting our journey following Henry’s death, to help those who haven’t experienced this loss have a window into the world we bereaved parents all know only too well. The blog is called Pine Cones and Study Days, as it aims to document the two parts of our journey – Pine Cones for the parenting part of our journey (pine cones have become our symbol for Henry as he is buried under a pine tree) and Study Days for the campaigner/educator/change activist part of our journey. Speaking up and speaking out helps give a voice to everyone else on the same path who might not be able to find the words and, I hope, makes them feel less alone, especially if they are in the early stages of this most isolating of journeys.

It’s a wonderful honour to have been nominated and shortlisted for this award again. Every parent walking this path is inspirational just for being able to get up every morning and put one foot in front of the other. All the people on this shortlist, and indeed all those who were nominated (and those that weren’t), are truly amazing mums and dads, all deserving of recognition in their own right.

Is what I’ve done and am doing inspirational? Some people seem to think so, which is truly humbling. To me, it’s just my way of helping others on this tragic journey, and of hopefully stopping some other parents from walking in these same uncomfortable shoes that we have come to know only too well over the last four and a half years.

“Chris regularly shares his story to a wide audience via his blog and through his conferences, where he addresses healthcare professionals and parents. He is an eloquent and gentle speaker, yet with a determined message. He is a voice for me suffering from the loss of a child, and encourages others to share their story. Chris is adamant a change is needed in the taboo world of baby loss, and uses his voice in a dignified manner. He is truly worthy of the title Inspirational Father.”
LeighAnne Wright, Founder, Little Things & Co

And it’s about leaving a legacy for our son. We don’t get to be parents to Henry in the conventional way, so we have to find a different way to do it. All I can hope is that, wherever he is now, that he’s looking down on us and that we’re doing him proud. That’ll never be enough, but it’ll always be the foundation stone for all of this.

If I can look back on this journey, and say that there are parents out there who got better care than they otherwise would have because of things I’ve done, that’s amazing. And if I can look back on this and say that there are parents who got to take their baby home because of something I’ve done, and never know that they might otherwise not have done, now that’s something to be proud of.

People live long lives and don’t make differences like that. For my son to have achieved that without ever having taken a breath, now that’s a legacy.