Parents of twins who were stillborn last year are inviting anyone who has lost a child to take part in a celebration of their lives in Harrogate this autumn.

Hayley and Neil Patrick-Copeland hope to raise money for a charity supporting families through child bereavement with their Baby Loss Awareness Ball.

Hayley said she hoped the event would bring people together, as well as raising money for other parents going through the same situation.

She told the Stray Ferret:

“Everyone deals with it differently, but I think it’s really important to try and change the conversation around baby loss, so people don’t see the trauma and think, ‘we mustn’t talk about it’.

“The vast majority of people i’ve met would just love people to talk about their children, include them, say their names.

“People say, well-meaningly, they don’t want to upset you by reminding you about your children. But people don’t forget their children have died – they’re constantly in their mind.

“Yes, it might make you cry, but the fact that someone mentions them is emotional because it’s wonderful.”

Hayley was 25 weeks pregnant last year when her twin girls were born, on August 2 last year.

She and husband Neil had been told it was a high-risk pregnancy, because the twins shared a placenta, and at 24 weeks doctors diagnosed twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS).

Despite successful laser surgery in Birmingham, the babies’ hearts stopped beating and they could not be saved. Hayley and Neil returned to North Yorkshire and she gave birth a few days later in hospital in York.

Hayley said:

“It’s the most life-changing, earth-shattering thing anybody could ever imagine.

“It’s everybody’s worst fear, your children dying, and on top of that not just the grief for the fact that you’ve lost them, but for the whole lifetime they should have had.

“Intertwined with that is the absolute joy and delight of meeting your children. They were our first children, so we became parents.

“The overwhelming joy of meeting these beautiful little girls we created is the greatest honour. This is why we are trying to make sure we have a legacy and make sure they are always part of our lives and our family, and remembered and included.”

As a result, the couple will raise money for the charity 4Louis through their blue-and-pink themed Baby Loss Awareness Ball, which takes place at Pavilions of Harrogate on Saturday, October 14.

4Louis provides memory boxes for parents whose babies are stillborn, enabling them to capture hand and footprints, and give their child a teddy bear.

The charity also delivers cooled boxes and blankets to allow bereaved families to spend more time with their children after they have died.

Hayley and Neil were able to spend time with Alya, left, and Aleah thanks to 4Louis

Although Hayley and Neil live in Selby, they chose the venue in Harrogate because of its peaceful setting, and to offer easy access to people from across North Yorkshire.

They particularly wanted to hold the night during Baby Loss Awareness Week, and all attendees will be given a candle to take home and use in the national wave of light the following evening.

If it goes well, Hayley said they hope it will become an annual event and a way of welcoming recently bereaved parents from across the county into a supportive community.

“Since the girls died and we had met them, we decided this was something we would like to do in their memory and all of those beautiful babies, especially so there was an event in North Yorkshire that recognised them in a fun, celebratory way that was not a sombre occasion.

“Candle-lit services are lovely and very special, but we also want a celebration for them.”

Tickets, which include a welcome drink, three-course dinner and entertainment, are £65 each or £600 for a table of 10. They can be booked via the event website.

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People who have lost babies are being invited to light a candle or leave a message at St Peter’s Church, Harrogate next week.

Baby Loss Awareness Week, which runs from October 9 to 15, is an awareness and support campaign around pregnancy and baby loss.

One in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage and 250 babies are stillborn every day in the UK.

Reflect, a pregnancy loss support charity, will be holding a Light a Candle remembrance event from 12.45pm to 2pm on Tuesday at St Peter’s Church. People will be able to light a candle or leave a message in remembrance of their loss.

Baby Loss Awareness Week, now in its 20th year, enables those affected to come together to remember and commemorate lost children.

The week also provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the impact of pregnancy and baby loss and the importance of bereavement support.

Tanya Allen from Reflect charity said:

“We hope that our Light a Candle event will provide an opportunity for local bereaved parents and families to remember their precious babies. We also would like anyone dealing with the pain of pregnancy and baby loss to know that there is support available; at Reflect we provide free one-to-one support for individuals and couples.”

Baby Loss Awareness Week is observed internationally and culminates with the Wave of Light on October 15, when people across the world light a candle at 7pm local time and leave it burning to remember all babies that have died too soon.

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Knaresborough mum-of-three and musician Clare-Lucy Pascall is releasing an album of songs about the trauma of miscarriage.

Baby Loss Awareness Week, which is taking place for the 19th year, aims to offer families who have suffered pregnancy and baby loss a supportive space to share their experiences and feel they are not alone.

Ms Pascall, who suffered a miscarriage in 2018, said writing music has helped her come to terms with her experience.

“It sounds terrible, but I call it creation from devastation. That’s where it comes from. When you’ve gone through trauma, creating something worked so well so I could come to terms with it.”

‘An awful moment’

In 2018, Ms Pascall went for her 12-week scan, which she said had “always been the fun part” of pregnancy as it had been the first time she and her husband Harry could see and hear their new child.

But the couple were dealt the devastating news that the baby had no heartbeat.

She said:

“It was a weird, awful and a nothing moment. I could see her. That was the hard part. She still looked like a baby.”

Ms Pascall then had to go through months of uncomfortable hospital procedures.

“My body didn’t play ball. I spent April to July going to hospital visits, having scans and doing things you don’t want to do when you know you’re not having a baby.”

A naturally outgoing and gregarious person, Ms Pascall said she was “physically speechless” and unable to speak to anyone about what she’d been through.

“I didn’t give myself a chance to grieve the loss. I locked it away and put it on the backburner. I couldn’t cope with it.”

“At the same time I was doing everything i normally do, and not telling anybody.”

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Ms Pascall said her husband Harry was “her rock” throughout the period but it took a year before she was ready to go to a counsellor to help her through the emotional trauma.

To remember her daughter, she takes flowers to Stonefall Cemetery, which is where babies that have miscarried are cremated.

“Remembering sounds like such a random thing when you didn’t get through a pregnancy. But I could see the scan, she was there, I knew she existed.”

Debut album

Ms Pascall’s debut album, which is called “Dear Friend, Who Am I?” will be released on Amazon, iTunes and Spotify.

She said:

“In my music and my songs, she comes out in them all the time. It feels like an imagined memory, what it would have been.”

Ms Pascall will hold an album launch party at Fashion House Bistro on November 8th — the date that would have been her daughter’s third birthday.

“The 8th was her due date, so it’s quite a big thing.

“It’s awareness and acknowledgement [about miscarriage] but also about the creativity that has risen from that devastating loss.”

Listen to her album here.