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My Plea:

Receiving this nomination was surreal and completely overwhelming, from losing Bea and just doing what I thought was the least I could do, it so truly touching when someone can consider you as ‘inspiring’. This is the story of how I came to be nominated.

In June 2017, we found out very unexpectedly that we were expecting a baby. From 5 weeks, I had a lot of pain and had a scan – which couldn’t confirm if there was yet a heartbeat or not, so there was a long awaited two weeks to find out. Two weeks later the reality hit and it was confirmed that there was a heartbeat.

I am a Midwife, so I am very much aware of the ways pregnancy can be, I know that it isn’t always positive – so understandably my anxiety about this pregnancy was already particularly high. For the past 6 years I have had a particular interest in providing bereavement care and have spent time with many families and being in the most priveledged position and meeting their babies. My ambition since I started my Midwifery course was to become a Bereavement Midwife and this has always been reflected whilst I was a student and since qualification. For three years as a student I helped to support families at a local support group and intermittently continued this whilst qualified.

I haven’t really shared Bea’s story quite so publically before, but sharing and creating more awareness is exactly what this is about. I had a fairly smooth pregnancy (aside for the almost constant vomiting until around 14 weeks), I lost around 6kg in weight and only managed to start putting this back on at around 20 weeks. At 20 weeks, we attended a routine anomaly scan and throughout everything seemed normal and healthy. The sonographer reached her head and was unsure if she could identify part of her brain – so she requested another sonographer to attend and she confirmed the same. We were then shown to a ‘quiet room’ and then seen an hour or so later on the Fetal Medicine Unit. The consultant repeated all the aspects of the scan and assured us that everything seen was normal, but an MRI scan could be offered for reassurance.

The MRI scan wasn’t available until 2 weeks later (after our holiday), so in the middle of night shifts I went for an MRI. Three days later, whilst in the car on the hard shoulder of the motorway, we were told of the extremely unexpected results and that our baby had Schizencephaly – a severe brain condition that affects 1:100,000 with very limited research and it is a severely life limiting condition. Knowing what we knew and knowing what her quality of life would be like, we had to make the most difficult decision and decide to end the pregnancy, to have a medical termination/ compassionate induction.

These words will never justify the exact feelings or emotional trauma that are associated with ‘ending my pregnancy’, I had to decide to stop my baby’s heart, to no longer let her grow, allow her to live or to ever experience everything you ever should as a parent. I would never have a first birthday, a first day at school, watch her get married or see her have her own children. Instead I had this and for us, this was the only option because we couldn’t stand to let her ever suffer or spend another moment later in her life having to make the decision to take her off any kind of life support.

Following two days at home awaiting induction (the longest two days – knowing your baby that is now kicking, will no longer be kicking in a few days), a 24 hour induction and labour, Beatrice was born at 14:28 on 2nd November 2017. She was perfect, with a perfect button nose, beautiful hands and feet and the longest legs, weighing 520g (1lb 2oz). We spent 3 days with her in hospital (where I work), we created memories and we held her for as long as we could. In the weeks that followed, we had her funeral and worked our way to finding what was the new normal.

Bea was born at 23+4, so because of this I wasn’t entitled to maternity leave/ pay and so I used holidays and sick pay to have time off from work.

I was home alone for the majority of this time and needed a way to do something and even find a way to do something in memory of Bea, but also give something back. Looking back at some aspects of my own care and knowing of some of the horrendous care I had heard about from other families I felt that something needed to change. I had experience in bereavement and had links with local universities, I first considered setting up a conference day for bereavement care, then I soon realised that it is far beyond one day and so Beyond Bea Charity was established on 8th January 2018. The Charity was set up to provide free bereavement training across the UK and thanks to the incredible support so far, we have done exactly that. We now travel across the UK delivering training to students and health professionals in universities, hospitals and hospices and sharing Bea’s story and improving the way care is delivered.

The journey hasn’t been the easiest, being a Midwife and going back to work after 4 months was one of the single hardest challenges and everything was a trigger. Over time my uniform has become my cape and I now feel like I have two personas – One is Steph the Midwife and the other is Steph in her normal life, who is a mother. Don’t get me wrong, if anyone asks at work if I have children, they will never not know about Bea, but being in my professional capacity has helped me continue and improve as the Midwife I am, and thanks to Bea I am able to return to providing bereavement care for other families and she has helped them.

What others have said:

“Steph tragically lost her daughter Bea at 23+4 in November 2017. Within weeks, Steph had established a new charity, Beyond Bea, to deliver free bereavement care training to student midwives and maternity professionals. As a midwife herself, Steph had been very aware of the inconsistent quality and often high cost to the provision of bereavement care training. I have met some truly inspirational individuals in the four years since we became part of the baby loss community, but I am truly in awe of how much Steph has managed in such a short space of time. I know Bea will be so proud of everything her mum has done.”

https://youtu.be/8blToSYTCVA