Zoe Clark-Coates has lost five pre-term babies. She tells Kathy Hurst why she and her husband, Andy, set up Saying Goodbye for grieving couples like themselves
Zoe Clark-Coates remembers the moment a scan showed that her second pregnancy, like her first, had ended. “I’ll never forget the midwife’s face as she looked at the screen. She fell completely silent and I started screaming – a terrible, almost primal reaction over which I had no control. Looking back, I feel sorry for all those women sitting in the waiting room who were forced to listen to such an ordeal.”
What Zoe didn’t know was that she and her husband, Andy, would have the same experience again. In the space of three and a half years, the couple, both 36, have lost five pre-term babies: Coby, Bailey, Darcy, Samuel and Isabella. Each baby was named, loved and mourned.
Today, Zoe and Andy have two daughters, Esme, aged three and Bronte, eight months. But Zoe regards herself as a mother of seven, not as a mother of two. “I don’t want to forget the babies who were never born. They will always be a part of me,” says Zoe.
Coping after a miscarriage can be extremely difficult for both parents. “People often underestimate the level of trauma,” Zoe says. “Each time I’ve lost a baby, I’ve felt I might die with the pain. The grief was suffocating. It’s overwhelming having to decide on the spot whether you want an autopsy or the body released to you. Not being able to face going to bed at night, knowing you’re going to have to go through the anguish of the following day. And there’s this terrible fear that you might never be a mother at all,” she says.
She and Andy felt keenly that unlike the death of a person who has lived some kind of life – even if only for a few days after birth – there is no ritual public acknowledgment of the loss of a life. “When you miscarry, there’s no funeral and no way of saying goodbye,” says Zoe.
Knowing that thousands of women miscarry, or experience stillbirth, she and Andy came up with an idea – a way for grieving couples to experience closure. Under the name Saying Goodbye, they have organised cathedral services in various cities in mainland Britain this summer – London, Exeter, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester. Everyone involved has donated their time – and contributions in kind – including clergymen and women, organists, choirs, florists and printers. Parents will be invited to light a candle at the service to commemorate their loss. With the backing of the Miscarriage Association, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, Zoe was able to approach numerous cathedrals. “Their response was amazing,” she says. “They immediately said this was exactly the kind of thing they should be doing, that there was such a need.”
The services are Church of England but people of every denomination and faith are welcome. Half of the funds raised by the event will be donated to the cathedrals, but there will be no charge for their use. Cathedrals were chosen because of their size – big enough, it’s expected, to seat everyone who wants to attend.
The first service will be held in Exeter, in July – Zoe and Andy will stand alongside other bereaved parents,to say goodbye to their unborn babies. “The services are a wonderful opportunity for mothers and fathers to say that their babies are truly loved and will always be missed.”
Saying Goodbye will offer parents an occasion on which to focus their grief. “Andy and I want to be able to lay to rest the babies we’ve lost, in a sense, and to help others do the same,” Zoe says. “Every child deserves to be recognised, however fleeting its existence.”
As Ruth Bender-Atik, managing director of the Miscarriage Association, says, “Miscarriage is, sadly, a common experience – an estimated one in four pregnancies end this way. Couples can feel shock, grief and loss, yet there is something in our culture that makes us draw a veil over the sadness and urge people to move on.
“Even a very early miscarriage represents the loss of a baby and all the accompanying hopes, dreams and plans, but that sense of loss can stay hidden, unrecognised, even minimised by others. The Saying Goodbye services offer parents the opportunity to mark publicly these briefest of lives.”
The last three and a half years have presented Zoe and Andy with more than their fair share of sadness. The miscarriage in 2007 was only picked up at a scan – the foetus had appeared healthy at earlier examinations. After her worst fears were confirmed, Zoe was given the option of a medical procedure, but decided to go into labour naturally at home. It is a choice she regrets. “Waiting a week for labour to start was just horrendous,” says Zoe. “There was this nagging, irrational hope that there had been a mistake with the scan. And once the process did start it was so painful, so distressing.”
Then, late in 2010, the couple waited until Christmas Eve to tell their families that they were expecting once again. Everyone was euphoric. But when Zoe went upstairs, only moments later, she started bleeding.
The ensuing days, with limited access to medical help, compounded the torment. “One doctor told me there was no point having a scan – that I’d definitely miscarried,” Zoe recalls. But the couple demanded proof and 13 long days later were able to book an appointment for a scan.
To their amazement, it showed that Zoe had been carrying twins and while one had died, the remaining twin was healthy.
They were jubilant, but their joy was short-lived: within a few weeks Zoe was diagnosed with an infected gallbladder and faced life-threatening surgery that could have put her and the unborn child at risk. By the time she was 12 weeks pregnant, she was bedridden, unable to eat and hunched over in pain.
An ultrasound scan showed that her gallbladder was full of stones, and had collapsed. It would be a week after a successful operation to remove the gallbladder before Zoe and Andy could be assured that Bronte had survived.
“Each time we’ve conceived, I haven’t allowed myself to believe it was real – with everything that went on with my previous pregnancies, I couldn’t rest until I was finally able to hold Bronte in my arms,” says Zoe.
“When you have recurrent losses and are told your baby has passed away, you feel that you’ve just run a marathon and are being sent back to the start again. You’re back with the charts, monitoring ovulation; the pregnancy tests, which are, at one and the same time, terrifying and exciting; the calendar counting the days until your baby reaches viability. Not until delivery can you start to entertain the possibility that you might be going home with a newborn baby,” she says.
Zoe still grieves but has transformed her pain into something positive, in the form of Saying Goodbye. “I believe everything happens for a reason,” she says. “It would be a fitting tribute to [the babies] if the anguish we’ve endured could help others. I hope the services will give families closure and enable them to see the possibility of light at the end of the tunnel.”
Years of loss mean that Zoe appreciates every moment of motherhood. “I don’t even mind the sleepless nights,” she says. “What I’ve been through makes me embrace being a mother. In my darkest moments, I started to wonder whether it was just not meant to be. Even now, I still feel complete elation that I’m finally a mum.”
• Further information, including a list of dates and locations for services, go to sayinggoodbye.org. The Miscarriage Association offers support and information to anyone affected by pregnancy loss: miscarriageassociation.org.uk
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