Phillippa shares how she and her husband Aaron have lost eight babies between their two living children. Their hardest loss was the stillbirth of their little boy, Mason James Reeks, who was born in 2014 at 23 weeks and five days. When Phillippa had Mason much of her basic care was wrong. Nurses never did any memory making for her and Aaron, the hospital lost Mason’s body for three days and a sample from his face was taken for histology, so Phillippa and Aaron were never able to have their son back because it would have been too traumatic as he didn’t look the same. The couple weren’t signposted to any bereavement support either but discovered Sands could support them six months after they lost Mason. Phillippa’s main drive to try to change and improve maternity and bereavement care is because she doesn’t want her kids or her niece and nephew to ever go through what she and Aaron did.
I've got an 18-year-old son Dylan and an 8-year-old daughter Darcy. Me and my husband Aaron have been together since we were 15. We married at 19. Between our two children, we’ve lost eight babies which is why there's such a massive age gap.
Our hardest loss by far was our little boy, Mason James Reeks, who was born in 2014 at 23 weeks and five days.
We had a horrendous experience and the whole thing was dreadful from start to finish. Mason was an IVF assisted conception, so we knew exactly what my due dates were, but healthcare professionals argued all the way along that I was only 10 weeks until he was born at 23 weeks, five days and then they said you were right.
I delivered Mason at home, but his placenta got stuck in my cervix, so I was haemorrhaging by the time I got to the hospital. They had to do a D&C straight away on the bed with no anaesthetic and the only doctor that was available was pregnant. She kept apologising to me, but it wasn’t her fault, that's just the situation she was in, but those sort of things just shouldn't happen. I never want that to be anybody else's experience.
After Mason was born, the nurses took his body off me and took him away to take samples for histology. As we'd had so many previous losses they were going to do a post-mortem, but they cut a section off his face for histology. I wonder why anyone would think that’s okay? Why they would think to take a sample from the most visible part of him. Because they’d taken a section out of his face the nurses told us we couldn’t have him back because it would be too traumatic because he didn’t look the same. So, we never had our son back.
The nurses never did any memory making for us either, so we never had handprints, footprints, photos or anything like that. We weren't treated like bereaved parents, my husband got sent home an hour after we arrived at the hospital, and I was left haemorrhaging on incontinence pads on the bed and they said, oh, well, we'll deal with that later.
The hospital then lost Mason’s body for three days. He literally disappeared for three days then arrived at the mortuary and I had a phone call to say did you realise that your baby was a boy?
So much of my basic care when I had Mason was wrong.
On the day that we lost Mason one of the midwives said, “oh, isn't it a shame that you don't live in England because they'd have tried for him there", and we live literally 15 minutes from the bridge.
The worst comment she made was when she tapped me on the back as she was leaving and told me she’d brought the pot back that we’d taken Mason to hospital in. When I called the hospital, they’d said to put Mason in some water in a pot to preserve him while we travelled, so we’d done all of that and she still said, "would you like the pot back?" I've got a dry sense of humour so I looked at my husband and said, "I don't think I could eat my sandwiches out of that now, thanks." My husband's looking at me like are you being serious? Then she patted me on the back and said, “oh well, better luck next time chick” and I'm thinking, that is our eighth loss. It's not okay to say something like that after any loss but that was our eighth. We'd just gone through a horrendous process, a whole lot of trauma and the midwife just said better luck next time chick.
The bereavement midwife was about 19 too. She’d had never had a child or a loss so I was thinking there's no way I can talk to you about this because you’re just not going to get it. The bereavement midwife completely messed up our paperwork too. Mason's first set of paperwork said product of conception of Philippa and Aaron Reeks. When it went to the crematorium, the crematorium owner, who was a bereaved parent himself, rang us and said, do you realise that's what's going to be on his headstone and anything that you choose to do with his ashes? because everything will come with the wording from the paperwork. I said no, that's not what I want, even baby Reeks is better than that, so we went back to the hospital. It took me four times going back and forth to get his name right on the paperwork so we were able to have it put on his headstone properly and it shouldn’t be that way.
When you do a pregnancy test you don't ever say there's a foetus because that's your baby. From the moment you're pregnant you're planning their name, how they're going to live, you're imagining their whole lives in your mind so for them to be downgraded to a product of conception on paperwork just isn’t right. Who in their right mind thinks that's a good thing to put on anybody's paperwork?
The bereavement midwife also asked if there were any dates I didn’t want Mason’s funeral to be on. It was Aaron’s grandma's 80th birthday on the 29th August so I said any date in August bar that one, but she booked his funeral for the 29th August - the only date I asked for it not to be. On the day, we had Mason’s funeral at 8.30am in the morning then went to Gwent for Aaron’s grandma's birthday, then onto another hospital because my cousin was on end of life care there with a brain tumour and then onto see my mum in Cardiff so I had no chance to even breathe that day.
We also weren’t told that Mason would have a baby coffin or how anything would look at his funeral so when we got there Aaron and I hadn't even discussed who was going to carry him. We looked at each other, and I said you do that, because that gives you something you can do for our son, but at the same time, I was thinking whoa, I wasn't expecting any of this. The lack of awareness of how Mason’s funeral was going to look affected us both. That’s the sort of support and care that needs to be in place because helping parents to be fully aware of what they’ll walk into makes a massive difference to their mental ability to cope.
It took us three years to consider trying for another baby and when we decided to try for a last time for my daughter Darcy, I'd already been through the Ombudsman because Mason’s treatment was so bad.The hospital actually self-referred, which I've never heard of before. They took our case to the Ombudsman themselves because they knew there were failings that they couldn't uncover in their own investigations. Sadly, everything that the hospital told us they would put in place after our experience, they still haven't.
My main drive to try to change and improve things is that I don't want my kids or my niece and nephew to ever go through what we did.
Because nobody should ever be put in that situation, where trying for a baby almost costs them their marriage.
I've had no mental health support maternity wise either. The only reason I've had any mental health support is because I've also got stage four lung disease, so my respiratory team referred me to their psychologist because mental health affects my breathing.
I’m also pushing for more recognition and support for dads as lack of support and recognition has been a massive part of my husband struggling because he's always felt like he can't get involved and can't get help, because he didn't really do anything physically when I had Mason. He wasn't the person that went through the haemorrhaging, and he said he felt like he was just on the sidelines and almost didn’t matter, but sometimes it's harder being the person on the sidelines, not being able to stop anything and being the one that's supposed to be strong, the one that's supposed to watch all that trauma happen but it not have an impact. But actually, inside you're thinking, oh my God, how do I deal with this? What do I do next? That's definitely been a big part of my husband's journey and then it impacted on his ability to be present through my daughter's pregnancy and birth as he struggled to attach to her. When she was born, she ended up in NICU so that brought a whole different level of trauma. She was resuscitated at birth, but those things made us think would it have been different if Mason had been born two days later, could he have made it? While Darcy was in the NICU, there was a 26 week baby next to her and in one way I was glad we didn’t have to fight with Mason like that but in another, I thought that could have been our life. He could have been here too but for the fact we live 15 minutes in the wrong direction, which a midwife voiced to us.
I didn't know that I could access Sands support at the time I lost Mason.
I thought because he wasn't full term that I couldn't access it. We actually found that Sands could support us six months after we lost him, and we started the process of getting support then, but it shouldn't be like that. There should be somebody that says you deserve to grieve your baby and who can offer you signposting to support.
For a while, I was made to feel like Mason was almost a dirty secret and that I ought to keep him quiet. I didn’t feel I could mention him because nobody would understand because he wasn't really a real baby but becoming involved with Sands, I realised that he is a baby and was still our son. I've had a tattoo done for him recently with his date of birth and a grey bear. My daughter wanted me to have it. She said, you've got a tattoo for me and Dylan on your leg with our times of birth. Where's Mason's? And I thought, you're right because we've always included him in family discussions. Darcy knows that she had a bigger brother, and she knows that we lost him. She calls my tattoo Mason’s bear now. We still celebrate his birthday and think about him on his due date.
When Darcy was born, I saw what my care should have been like with Mason, because she was premature, because her birth was traumatic and because things went wonky in the delivery room, that's how I should have been treated when I had Mason too.
I should have been treated like I was a real person, like a mum that was going through a lot. I was really unwell and losing so much blood that the doctors were even talking about a hysterectomy at one point because they couldn't stop the bleeding. I look back now and think I went through all of that and yet I left the room with absolutely nothing, not a thing.
We applied for a Sands memory box for Mason ourselves afterwards, which we got, and we put the teddy in with him and stuff, but all of that should have been done at the hospital. None of that should have been us finding it ourselves afterwards.
Nobody went through the process of what we should have done with Mason after his funeral either. We wanted him cremated so we had that done, but then what do we do? It sounds awful but we took him home and put his ashes with the dog. For years he lived under our stairs. It was when my daughter was little and my nephew came over to our house that he said, "was Mason really naughty?" I said, "what do you mean?" He said, "why does he live under the stairs? He's like Harry Potter", and I thought, "you know what? You're absolutely right. This can't happen anymore", so we buried his ashes on Halloween and did a Halloween party afterwards for the kids.
It’s been extremely hard to get where we are now, but I'm hoping that little by little we'll start to see change and with the launch of pre-24 week baby loss certificates in Wales we’ll see recognition that you’re a bereaved parent, regardless of when that happened during your pregnancy.
