We got all the parts back [from the post mortem] and there were, we had a little service in one of the churches, which I was very surprised about because there was quite a few people there.

And it was very surreal because you go in there and theres all the little children there and there are tiny little boxes, lovely little white boxes, and they’re all lined up you know. It takes you a while before they say like, ‘If you want to hold your child through the service… you know you, it’s almost like, ‘Well should we or shouldn’t we?’ And somebody will take the lead and then all of a sudden everybody goes there, and they, and they sit there, and you have this service.

And then the next day you have a funeral – a sort of mass grave – [at] an amazing little cemetery, and it’s so colourful. And theres mobiles and bells and jangly things and you think crikey – you look at some of the children that have actually died you know, and it was very humbling I think.

And that was helpful?

Yeah, I think anything like that I mean… as you get older you can see the rituals in life mean things, and you might not agree with them, but they’re very important to do, because you know obviously people have evolved and, and they do that, and you don’t just sort of…Well, theres a dead baby and well just throw it out in the rubbish, you have to say goodbye, you have to deal with it in that manner. At the time you think it’s very difficult to do, but afterwards it’s almost like closing the door, shutting the door you know, you can get on with your life, you can move forward.

So he was taken to the chapel. We didn’t get to see him again until the funeral, and then he was just in his coffin. My husband took the coffin from the car to the graveside. Pouring day of rain, absolutely awful, but my husband’s cousins were there, so there was only the 4 of us, plus the chaplain and the undertaker, and probably the gravedigger I think actually. And that was it. It was just a very small ceremony, and theres nothing – I think that was probably my first funeral ever.

So again that was, for me, a huge step to being an adult I suppose. Up to that point I’d been young and na’ve, and yes I’m a Mum, yes I’ve been married, but I’d never gone through seeing someone die that I’d loved, and being there to be at a funeral. I’ve had relatives die but when I was living away, never got home for the funeral. And it was just ‘this has to be done and within that, we then flew home that very day, and I had to deal with everybody at home.

So theres nothing that can make you deal with it any easier, you just have to come home and hug and talk to the children that were here and explain to them why this had happened, because they were just looking forward to a baby brother. He was just going to be the next addition to the family, and they’d ask if they could take him out for a walks when he was born, just silly things.

They asked if we wanted a post-mortem and we said, ‘No. And then the hospital said, ‘Right well, well organise a burial. Weve got funeral directors who we deal with and well pass on your details. Which they did, and the funeral directors organised everything and they said, ‘The burial will be on this day at this time.

And it was really pouring down that morning, really badly, almost as if, it was like even God was mad. And my husband and I went – we decided that we didn’t want anybody else there – and I think in a way that was a wrong decision. I wish maybe wed have asked our parents to come. But my husband’s mum was so upset that I think she would have been more of a burden than a support.

And then I think we were worried wed have to keep ourselves together for people which, we just wanted it to be us. So we went, and the funeral service came in a car, and we went into the little chapel in the cemetery, and they just did a few prayers. And I really can’t even remember anything about it. I think some of the worst parts, I don’t know, just some parts are just completely blank, I just can’t remember.

So they did a little service and then we went to the cemetery. And they just had the baby in a tiny coffin, a little white coffin, and they just buried him. And then we went home. And then in the afternoon we took my husband’s mum back to the cemetery. And it was nice because we went back and it was sunny by this time. Because it was only July so it was a, just strange that the weather was like it was in the morning. But it was sunny, and they’d put the grass over the top where the coffin was. And we took some more flowers. And it just seemed right then that wed gone when it was all covered over with the grass and the flowers were there and it was sunny, rather than a big hole in the ground where it was pouring down and we just left. So I felt better for that.

And then I think after that it was just a case of, wed done everything, wed done all the steps we needed to maybe try and get on with our lives. Not that we did a very good job for a while, but that was the end of the saga as it were.

It was all done by the hospital. I mean, at that stage I had absolutely no ideas about what you do in terms of funeral arrangements. And the hospital asked, just asked us, you know, explained that they had something set up with the local funeral directors and would we be happy for that to go ahead;

So, you know, we just said yes, and the hospital chaplain said shed do the funeral for us. Where we were living theres a particular area within the town cemetery that’s a baby memorial where the babies are buried. So they took care of that and we were able to go down to the funeral directors and we left a blanket and some photographs and I think, bought her a little toy that we wanted to go in with her;

And then the funeral again, was another day where I felt really relieved and calm, but my husband found it was one of his difficult times, again because of the reality of it, I suppose. As funerals are, they sort of bring it home;

But I mean I was really impressed, I mean, the, the funeral directors, it was a free service that they provided, which in these days, you know, these times was just, I thought it was wonderful that a business did it. And they brought her in a hearse driven slowly. She was in a wooden coffin with a name plaque. They’d put a little pink rose on the top. It was done really, really nicely and I just thought, as a free service that they were offering, it was really nice and I found it, the funeral quite, quite calming;

Very strange, I mean a few friends came and [husband’s] parents came but I didn’t feel like it was an event to invite everybody – it’s getting a balance between it being private and – but at the same time she was our daughter, sort of thing;

So we just had a little, a little service by the grave and, and then Concorde went over, which I really liked, that shed got a fly-past from Concorde. It came straight over us so that was quite noisy but that was, you know, it was that kind of…

And then we just went back to the pub and had a, had some lunch and a drink and it was nice because everyone had got the afternoon off work and I found that day really, really relieving, I suppose that, because of having that interim period of not knowing where she was, suddenly now it was, it literally was that feeling of, you know, shes at peace now, I know exactly where she is, I know that shes safe;

With the second pregnancy we don’t have a prayer if you terminate the pregnancy, or the baby dies inside you, or is stillborn, because as Muslims, what we believe is the baby goes straight to heaven, so, it’s like a little angel, so you don’t need a prayer for them, because they are pure little angels. Whereas like, adults, people who breathe, children who breathe, that’s a different case, where we will say a prayer for them. But with a termination, we didn’t need to read anything or pray or anything, because that baby was pure, and went straight to heaven.

In our tradition – it’s tradition this time – when it comes to burial women don’t go to bury their baby. So it was my husband, my dad, all like the male relations, they went to bury the baby, and really I stayed at home. And I was glad, really, I didn’t go to bury the baby, because I don’t think I could have bear to see the little baby, you know, being put down in the ground. And I felt, because I went through birth, I gave birth to it, this was something my husband could do on his own. So I felt giving birth was my part – him burying the baby was his part.

It was a hard day for everybody but, you know, it went as well as I expected – again wed got special songs – weve got an [baby] disc as well, that we play her records – and we picked two particular songs that we wanted to play.

I also read out, I didn’t, I was going to read out but couldn’t, a poem that I’d actually found in one of my ARC (Antenatal Results and Choices) newsletters, which was very touching, it was lovely. So again the funeral I organised, and it just made, at the time it just made me feel better that I was in control of something, because I wasn’t in control of what was happening to the health of my baby. So I needed to be in control in another way and that, that just kept me going really, sort of making sure that everything was in place and how I wanted it.

The funeral was beautiful. I couldn’t believe the trouble they went to. We didn’t have to pay for anything, I still can’t get over that. It was all done completely you know, free of charge. Because I just thought it was going to be a kind of… I don’t know, I just thought it was going to sort of be, you know, not like a funeral per se, but like they were just going to kind of take care of things. And you know you’d maybe sort of have, you know, you could decide whether it was cremation or burial, and I just assumed that you’d either get the ashes to deal with or you know, there would be the little plaque for you to know exactly… but it was the whole thing. We got told like where the cemetery was, it was one not far from us, and the day and the time.

And we get there, and theres a thing up on the wall that, saying, ‘cos throughout we called her [name], I don’t.. just ‘the bump’ became ‘[name]. And it had like [name] on the, on the name, the schedule thing, along with some other people like you know… staggered times. And they… the big car came. Big car came, and this, the little teeny tiny coffin, the name tag with [name] on the top. And the little church, well its more like a chapel in the crematorium, it was just like, you could tell it was going to be children’s stuff all day ‘cos there was toys, flowers and everything.

The priest did a whole ceremony. We hadn’t, we hadn’t asked anybody else to come, because we figured that really and truly we were the only ones that knew her. Like as we were leaving we saw another family arrive, and they had lots of people there but I didn’t think I could have handled that having… so many people around.

Liberal synagogue, and this rabbi in particular was very well he was very supportive, in fact I don’t think I’ve told too many other people of this synagogue, but the other thing that happened was that the following week I went to the synagogue, and when, when you, when you have a death then they call the, the name out in the synagogue. And the rabbi asked how wed feel about having the baby called out, and we gave the baby a name. Wed given the baby a name which is partly the name that we might have chosen anyway, which was partly named after my late father. And so we said yes okay.

And I went to the synagogue and the rabbi called out the name and said, ‘Death of… and mentioned the baby’s name, ‘Son of… and then mentioned both of our names. And so it was done, so he was reading it out as if that had been a child that had died. And, and it felt quite strange because obviously there wasn’t a child who had been born who died, but yet, yes it did feel right to recognise it in that way. And then my wife and I then we subsequently made an album about the baby – bits and pieces we collected from the ceremony and things like that.

We had the memorial in the hospital to say thank you for being able to have [baby] and to say thank you that she had been part of our family and we wanted to recognise that.

But we also felt that it was quite important for my partner and I to say our own private goodbye. And the chaplain that did the hospital service very kindly did the service at the cemetery for us, because she was born before the legal date to have a, a proper burial – I think it’s 24 or 26 weeks – if we also wanted we could attend the cremation which we did.

And that wasn’t as upsetting as having the, the service in the chapel. It was just my partner and I. The difficult bit was obviously seeing the shoebox-sized coffin and knowing that she was in there. But we both said our goodbyes at the hospital when we had her, and this just seemed to be carrying out what was expected and what was to be done. And then we collected the ashes I think a week later, which was when we also mentioned a possibility at the funeral directors about having a little memorial stone with her name which is in the garden.