For those that have lost a child of any age, and for those that have lost their mum's, mother's day's not an easy one to get through. Whatever you do today, and however you get through the day, wishing all you mum's out there a lovely day. Sending loads of love to you all.

The Still Loved team xxx

Some lovely quotes we found today:

"Thinking of all the parent's missing a child, and all the daughter's and son's missing their mum this mother's day"

Mother's Day Blessing


May those with children feel appreciated
May those grieving empty arms be comforted
May those mourning and missing the ones who gave them life,
Be wrapped in goodness and love today"
Tamara Rice

Still Loved, which started out as Still Born, Still Loved, has been in production for almost two years now, with three years prior to that spent on our short film Peekaboo (also about stillbirth), which led to us making this film.

We would like to acknowledge all of our sponsors so far on Still Loved, as we couldn't have come this far without you.

Our main sponsors are the South London and Maudsley Charitable Fund, who as well as sponsoring Peekaboo, have also given us a large grant towards the making of this documentary.

Christine Bell is a very kind private sponsor, who again has supported both Peekaboo and this film very generously. As has Alice Jolly and Vanessa Thatcher. All parents that have been affected by stillbirth themselves.

Derby Sands have supported in kindly, Sheffield Town Trust gave us a grant, and we've also raised several thousands pounds from very kind donations via our various crowd funding campaigns, fundraisers and auctions.

As well as monetary help, we have also received huge amounts of support from individuals and organisations in terms of equipment, discounts, accommodation, catering, and loaning of all kinds of things from marquees to lighting for our Wave of Light event in October 2013. Not to mention the time and effort that many people have put into this with their hard work.

Not forgetting, of course, our fantastic cast who have shared their most intimate stories with us and let us into their lives.

Thank you to every single person that has helped us get this far with Still Loved. We couldn't have done it without you.

Since we've not been doing as much filming lately, I just want to give you an update of what we're up to. It may seem like we've gone quiet but we're actually furiously working away on behind the scenes stuff at the moment.

For a start, we've run out of money so are putting lot's of time into funding applications, and we're also putting together our next crowd funding campaign which will go live very soon.

 We've also been designing and inputting material into this new website, and working on new publicity, teasers and marketing material, all which take a lot of time to get right.

Then there's been a lot of watching rushes, logging, making notes and transcribing interview footage to make it easier when we get into the full thrust of our edit.


Debbie has also been busy on her Women in Film and TV UK mentoring scheme in London, which is all very helpful for the film, including being mentored by Beadie Finzi of Britdoc.

So although we may not appear to be doing as much as usual, you can rest assured we're hard at work preparing for the next phase of post production.
We're really hoping our film will be completed by the end of summer 2014. Fingers crossed!

We've done some more filming in the last few weeks with Juliette and Matt, but we're not going into detail on our blog about this, for privacy reasons.

  It's been a total pleasure to get to know them both over the last year and we want to thank them so much for





















contributing to our film, even though it's been incredibly tough for them at times.

We want to wish them every happiness in the future and look forward to seeing them again, hopefully at the premiere of Still Loved in the next few months.

It’s been a long while since we’ve seen Beth and Steve Morris, last summer in fact, at the beautiful sea side birthday party for what would have been their twin daughters, Harriet and Felicity’s birthday party. They weren’t able to make the Wave of Light event in October because Beth was in Chicago at the time.

This weekend they were up in Derby visiting Beth’s wonderful parents, Kathie and Phil, who we have got to know quite well over the last year and a half, and Beth’s grandma too. So we joined them for the afternoon at Kathie and Phil’s house on Saturday, catching up on their news and spending time with them all. Not to mention being fed some delicious sandwiches and cakes by Kathie. It was great to get up to date with them all and hear their latest news and their forthcoming challenges. Steve is taking part in a 10K charity run and Beth is giving a speech at Tommy’s baby charity.

Beth and Steve arrived, looking very smart for a walk in the countryside, as they were going onto a Christening nearby afterwards, so donned their wellies and Barbour jackets over their suit and dress. The planted some spring flowers for the girls and it was touching to see them here, where they tragic story started in July 2012.

Beth and Steve seemed in good spirits over all and it was great to see them smiling and laughing so much this time. We wish them well for the coming year and hope that everything turns out well for them in 2014 as they head into a new phase of life and continue their wonderful fundraising for Tommy’s.

Our crew this weekend were: Director – Debbie Howard, DoP – Emma Dalesman, Sound – David Mitchell and young filmmaker Sonny Givnan who came along to film us for a mini ‘making of’ which will be very useful footage for us to use later. He also took some fantastic stills.

Big thanks to Beth, Steve, Kathie and Phil for making us all welcome.

On Tuesday 4th March Lou Evans of Derby Sands was asked to give a radio interview for BBC Radio Derby, along with Jean Wilkinson, bereaved mum, and Sheena Ratcliffe, bereavement midwife specialist.

Lou had met Jean at the Derby Sands Christmas service in December when Jean told Lou she had lost her baby in 1969 and had never really been able to talk about it. They have since become friends. Sheena has been working as a bereavement midwife for a long time.




They were asked to be interviewed on the Sally Pepper show for an hour. The main focus of the talk was to look at a new memorial that Lou and Derby Sands are setting up in Derby. This will be very helpful for people like Jean that don’t have a grave for their baby and will help a lot of parents that lost their babies many years ago. It was a great interview, looking at how different it used to be in the fifties and sixties when stillborn babies were just whisked away. Jean said she never even got a glance at her baby or knew if it was a boy or a girl, until many years later.

Sally Pepper led a fantastic interview, with genuine empathy and made the point clearly how important it is for this subject to be looked at, for people to be able to talk about their babies, and how the right after care and facilities like memory boxes and a proper burial or cremation help a parent to heal.

Lou and Sheena have been working with parents who lost babies years ago to try and track down what happened to them, and where they might be buried in mass graves. They are then able to have a plaque with their babies name in the cemetery near their babies. The new memorial will contain these babies names.

It was the great that the BBC gave a full hour of air time to look at this, and it was very sensitively handled by their team. Well done to Lou, Jean and Sheena and big thanks to Sally Pepper for a really good interview.

Our crew for the day was a one man band due to budget restrictions and prior commitments. But Leon Lockley did a fantastic job of filming and recording this event.

To listen again to the interview on BBC i player (next few days only) you can listen here (Fast forward to 01:13:43 where the interview begins):

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01rqn2z

To find out more about the new Derby Sands memorial see their website here:

http://www.derbysands.org.uk/69-in_the_news.htm

We wish them the best of luck with this and hope that the new memorial brings a lot of comfort to bereaved parents.