Today we had the pleasure of filming with Julie and Jay Cooke, their wonderful sons Liam and Spencer and a guest appearance from their kitten sparkle. It was also lovely to meet the others members of the family and their very well behaved dogs and older cat Rozee.

Julie and Jay kindly shared with us their incredibly sad story of the loss of two sons, Jak and Harrison. Both Jak and Harrison were stillborn a year apart. To go through this twice is horrendous and I’m not sure how they got through it. Julie had three children to a previous marriage and it affected the three siblings enormously. We had the privilege to meet Liam today, now 17, and what an exceptional and wonderful son he is. He talked to us about the loss of his brothers, how it affected him then, and how it does now, eight years later.

A year after losing their second son Harrison, Julie and Jay very bravely tried again for a third baby, and finally had their gorgeous little boy Spencer, Jay first son. This was a wonderful outcome and completed their family. It was wonderful to see how close Liam and Spencer are and how much they adore each other. Spencer is a special little boy and utterly adored by his family.

It was a challenging day again, filming in an incredibly hot house, with all the windows and doors shut (for sound issues), 8 of us in the room and some very hot and powerful lights. We were literally dripping at some points of the day. But lovely to get out in the garden towards the end of the day.

Our crew today were Debbie Howard – Director, Colin Pons – Producer, Paul Wiseman – Director of Photography and Heather Jordan – Sound Recordist.

Thanks so much to Julie, Jay and their family for making us welcome and sharing their story with us and to the crew for working in such high temperatures!

Today we shot our initial shoot day and interviews with Michelle Hemmington and her partner Paul Buckley. They shared with us their story of the loss of their son Louie Hemmington Buckley.

It was a challenging day filming in intense heat, but well worth it. Paul and Michelle were very open with us and shared the story of what happened with Louie, the tragic circumstances of his death, caused by horrendous hospital negligence, and their most treasured keep sakes and photographs from his memory box.



Michelle has been fighting hard since Louie’s death to get the laws changed around birth certificates for stillborn babies, and independent inquests into deaths of babies who died during labour for no given reason. She has set up the Campaign for Safer Births with Nicky Lyon to improve birth safety in the UK. Find them on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/campaignforsaferbirths. Michelle is determined to keep on fighting this until the law changes and parents of stillborn babies get given a birth certificate. This means so much to them. It is recognition that their baby did exists and was a real human being, their son or daughter.

We we delighted to meet their baby daughter Lulah May. I loved Lulah’s name because they had incorporated part of her brother Louie’s name into hers, and her middle name May is because that was the month Louie was born. The care and attention to details that parents that have lost their babies put into everything is so beautiful.

Our crew today was Debbie Howard – Director, Paul Wiseman – Director of Photograph, Heather Jordan – Sound Recordist and Emily Axon – Production Manager.

Thanks so much to Michelle and Paul for making us so welcome. Not to mention that totally amazing cake Michelle made for us, with raspberries from their garden. Delicious!

On the 15th of October this year, we will be filming a special Wave of Light event which will bring all the families in our film together for the first time, in a special ceremony to remember their babies. This event will also welcome hundreds of other parents too and we have some incredibly special ideas planned for this.





















We are delighted to announce that this will take place at the absolutely beautiful baby loss memorial garden in Chesterfield, ran by the Chesterfield Sands group. I went to meet the Sands team today and it’s wonderful that they are coming on board to support us with this event and our film. We’ll be working closely with Nicky, Louise and Claire. We also have the full support of Chesterfield Crematorium staff, where the baby garden is based. They are very helpful and supportive of this event. It will be a great opportunity to see these beautiful gardens in all their glory.

We’ll be commissioning some artists to work with us designing special lanterns and lights for the Wave of Light event as an art installation, and we’ll be planning some pretty special filming for this too. Public will be invited to come along and participate in this event, so do keep the date free in your diaries and we’ll give you more information as we have it. It will begin at 6pm ish with some lantern decorating and the main event will begin at around 6.45pm with a lantern parade and candle lighting at 7pm.

The Wave of Light is an international event that takes place every year on October 15th. People all over the world light candles in memory of their babies, and is a special day in October, which is Baby Loss Awareness month. More info is here: http://www.october15th.com/

We will be fund raising hard to make this an absolutely brilliant event for all the families that come along. If anyone would like to hold a fund raising event to help us with this please do let us know, or you can donate on our home page if you would like to do so.

We hope to see many of you there on the 15th October, a special day for every family that has lost a child, grand child or sibling and a chance to remember them all in a beautiful setting and one wonderful event.

On Sunday 7th July we were honoured to be invited to the special birthday celebration of Harriet and Felicity Morris, the twins of Beth and Steve Morris who would have been a year old now.

The weather couldn’t have been better for a day on the beach. Hot, sunny and glorious. But as we started to head to the destination, Camber Sands, near Rye, it became apparent that half of England had the same idea. The queues were enormous. So Beth smartly decided to change location to a less popular, but still very lovely beach nearby called Winchelsea Beach. We got a text message and quickly changed route to meet them there. This beach is pebbly rather than sandy, and has a few little slopes, but it is very pretty and at least there was room to get all the guests, our film crew and our equipment on there, not something we could have done at Camber this weekend!

The day was lovely, with many friends and family attending. Beth and Steve had ordered a simply wonderful cake for Harriet and Felicity, in their memory, and the day was full of laughter and smiles.

It was fantastic to see Beth and Steve is such high spirits after the painful and difficult year they have been through since losing their girls. There was food and drink in abundance, fun and games on the sands and even some swimming in the warm water. Mr Darcy (the dog) seemed to enjoy the day hugely especially his dip in the sea.


We interviewed Beth and Steve, and both sets of grand parents, Kath and Phil and Bill and Betty. It was lovely to catch up with everyone we haven’t seen since the cycle challenge.

Our crew for the day was Emma Dalesman Dop, Rob Newman Sound Recordist, Polly Perkins Producer and myself, Debbie Howard, Director. After the party finished Rob and Polly had a quick swim and then we set off home stopping at the chippy for tea, before we hit the road. We got only 20 minutes into our very long journey home and the exhaust fell off the car! This was after I’d just taken the car for a full service two days before we left and I specifically asked them to check the exhaust. We had to wait ages for the RAC to turn up, whilst getting attacked by midges. By the time we were on the road it was very late, Rob and Emma had missed the last train back to London so I drove them home, then it was still several more hours back to Sheffield. So Polly and I headed off until I was too tired to go any further, we pulled into Milton Keynes Services and spent the night in a motel and finally got home around midday on Monday!

Car troubles aside it was a fantastic weekend and we got some great footage. I’d like to say a big thank you to Beth and Steve and their families, to all our crew, and to Toby Perkins, MP for Chesterfield and our Producer Polly’s brother who kindly let us stay in his flat in central London the night before we travelled to the beach.



Our next shoot date coming up is on Friday this week when we’ll be filming a little closer to home in Derby, with Lou Evans from the Derby Sands group.

This week we filmed interviews with Lou Evans, her husband Matt and their son Finnley. Lou and Matt lost their daughter Lauren four and half years ago, and Finnley lost his little sister.

Since then Lou has become Chair of the Derby Sands group and works tirelessly to support other bereaved families and help them through their loss. She has established the local hospital giving our memory boxes when a baby dies, something she and Matt didn’t receive when Lauren died. This makes an enormous difference to families as they have everything they need to make memories of their babies, a box full of items they will treasure.





 
Lou works in healthcare herself and knows how important these things are to families, and how much difference they make. Matt is a fire fighter, and is used to working in situations of crisis, but going through losing his own daughter was something he was not prepared for. And their son Finn, now 7, misses his sister terribly. They each find their own ways of coping with their loss.

We interviewed Lou extensively on Friday, she shared her most personal memories with us and showed us all Lauren’s keepsakes. She also read the poem to us that she read at Lauren’s funeral. We then visited the cemetery and spent time at Lauren’s grave where we talked to Finn about his sister, and interviewed Matt about how he has grieved from a fathers perspective.

We’d like to thank them all for sharing their story and being so open and honest about their feelings.

We’ll be filming more with Lou and her family later in the year and also finding out more about Lou’s work with Sands.

Our crew for the day out on set was Grant Bridgeman – Sound Recordist, Emma Dalesman DoP, and Debbie Howard – Director. Producers were Colin Pons and Polly Perkins.