The world has faced incredible challenges over the last four years, especially in the last year dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. The ascension to, and consolidation of, power by right-wing populist authoritarian governments has been one of the most pressing issues - with Donald Trump and Boris Johnson the figureheads in the English-speaking world. Pressure [...]
"There must be an end to investigations, reviews, and reports that do not lead to lasting meaningful change."Ockenden Report into Maternity Services at Shrewsbury and Telford NHS Trust, 10 Dec 2020 It's been an historic day for the future of maternity safety. This morning, I was presenting at a Public Policy Exchange webinar entitled Transforming [...]
This is a piece about society. It isn't specifically a piece about human rights in an EU that includes Poland. It's not even specifically a piece about the direction of travel of next week's US Presidential election, last night's confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barratt to the Supreme Court of the United States, or the [...]
One stillbirth occurs every 16 seconds. It's more than four years since Richard Horton, the editor-in-chief of The Lancet, said "not all global health issues are truly global, but the neglected epidemic of stillbirths is one such urgent concern." The stillbirth landscape remains the same today, even at the height of other global health issues [...]
This blog has been knocking around in my head for a good few months, but it's been brought to a head by a couple of Instagram posts I saw by a brilliant lady I follow called Anna Mathur (@annamathur). Anna put a post up about how she'd been attacked by an online troll with this [...]
A few weeks ago, this blog was shortlisted in the ‘Something Different’ category at the Northern Blog Awards, an awards event for bloggers and other types of content creators in the North of England. We’re on our way to the awards ceremony, which is tonight at the Midland Hotel (swanky!) in Manchester. I'm really excited [...]
Why are we so bad, in our society, at dealing with death – in all its forms? Because we don’t know how to confront it, and British nature isn’t set up for confronting challenging topics head-on, so we try to shy away, change the subject, or gloss over the matter with flowery language. Obviously I [...]
In my last post about our journey, ‘Briony broke a mirror’, I talked about the abortive start of our IVF journey, our struggles with NHS funding criteria, and the remarkable revelation of the IVF ‘free pass’ that we discovered when Briony was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer in February 2015, nine months after Henry [...]
I spoke in ‘Finding out why’ about Henry’s post-mortem and getting answers as to the cause of his death. One of the things I’m realising about pregnancy after loss is that it drags up all sorts of thoughts and emotions that you thought you’d processed, parked, and dealt with. Yesterday we had our 16 week [...]
I recently wrote a social media post on the fourth anniversary of Henry’s funeral about how grateful I am to his two godfathers and his godmother for their incredible support in our darkest days, and especially at his funeral where they all took on central roles in the day in the least godparent-like activity you [...]
This is how I let a most unfortunate loss affect me, but not negatively. I made a choice to pay attention to the signs and understand why they were there. This is my perspective of a series of ironic events that changed me, and gave me knowledge.
My story as the father of a life that ended before it truly began.
Journey to become a strongwoman
Learning to find joy without Edith; life after baby loss
Walking in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, A Mother's Journey of Child Loss
A Dad's Take On Navigating Life and Parenting A Rainbow Baby After Loss
Pine cones and Study Days 