{"id":320379,"date":"2026-03-09T08:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T08:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/320379\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T08:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T08:47:08","slug":"my-fight-to-get-miscarriage-cradle-kits-in-every-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/320379\/","title":{"rendered":"My fight to get miscarriage cradle kits in every hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"

Laura explained she had gone to hospital in February 2024 for a scan, and was told there was no heartbeat.<\/p>\n

She said she had wanted a miscarriage with medical help in Bassetlaw Hospital, where she was a patient, but was told there were no slots for several weeks so she would have to go home and wait.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later she began to bleed.<\/p>\n

She said she asked to come into the hospital again, but was again told there was no space.<\/p>\n

“I was told… just try as best as you can,” she said. “There was nothing fit for purpose.<\/p>\n

“I felt like I didn’t matter, and my baby didn’t matter.”<\/p>\n

NHS guidelines state, external<\/a> that if a person has had three or more miscarriages in a row, further tests are often used “to check for any underlying cause”.<\/p>\n

Laura said she wanted to collect the remains to help with these tests, and also because she did not want the child she had been expecting “flushed down the toilet”.<\/p>\n

As she was at home, she said she had to use a kitchen sieve to collect the remains, and then store them in a takeaway tub in the fridge to bring to the hospital three days later, as she was told the hospital unit was out of hours.<\/p>\n

“It was really important to me, emotionally and practically, to collect baby,” she said.<\/p>\n

“For me when I first got those two blue lines, that’s a whole life, and you start imagining this entire life built around these two lines.<\/p>\n

“So to then have the end of that journey be flushed down the toilet is really traumatising, it’s really hard to reconcile with.”<\/p>\n

She said she was impressed by the individual staff, but was “failed” by the system.<\/p>\n

In response to Laura’s case, Lois Mellor, director of midwifery at Doncaster and Bassetlaw Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust – which runs Bassetlaw Hospital – said staff followed national guidance and “work hard to provide compassionate, supportive and respectful care”.<\/p>\n

She added: “We continue to review how we can best support women’s choices around dignity, remembrance and care at what is an incredibly difficult time.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Laura explained she had gone to hospital in February 2024 for a scan, and was told there was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-320379","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}