MPs shed tears hearing colleagues describe loss of their babies

MPs were moved to tears after colleagues shared their heartbreaking baby loss experiences, including one who kept it a secret from friends.

Labour's Vicky Foxcroft delivered the "hardest speech I have ever had to write or deliver" as she spoke publicly for the first time about the death of her five-day-old daughter Veronica.

She paused to take deep breaths while telling the Commons about her experiences as a teenager, and was followed by several others in a highly emotional debate.

SNP MP Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) struggled to speak as she explained how it was "very, very difficult" to sit next to women holding scan photographs shortly after she miscarried at 16 weeks.

For Conservative Byron Davies (Gower), it felt "almost an embarrassment" in the 1980s for him and his wife to talk about losing a child.

He said they were unable to discuss the grief and sadness from the "devastating experience", as he stressed the need for people to share their experiences.

Conservative Victoria Prentis broke down in tears as she urged improvements in care for pregnant and expectant mothers.

The Banbury MP lost her son soon after birth and nearly died after she was struck down by pre-eclampsia and the life-threatening pregnancy complications known as HELLP syndrome.

Labour's Sharon Hodgson also recalled her daughter's stillbirth at 23-and-a-half weeks, explaining: "Because she was born dead, although I always class her as a stillbirth, officially it was put down as a miscarriage and I wasn't given a death certificate.

"It was another trauma, on top of the trauma I'd already gone through, because then on paper it read miscarriage."

Special praise from MPs was reserved for Ms Foxcroft's courage as she sought to break the taboos surrounding baby deaths.

In a backbench business debate to mark baby loss week, Ms Foxcroft (Lewisham and Deptford) said she had been unsure about whether to raise such a personal experience.

After apologising to her friends for not speaking about it with them over the years, the Lewisham and Deptford MP said of Veronica: "I still love her. She is always in my thoughts. All these years afterwards. Even if I don't talk about her all the time.

"I don't not talk about her because I'm embarrassed. I'm not. It's because it hurts so much to do so.

"I don't have children now because I lived with the fear of the same thing happening and I just couldn't do it twice."

Opening the debate, Conservative Antoinette Sandbach warned ministers that baby loss is an "injustice" suffered by far too many UK families as MPs called for a major campaign to raise awareness

Ms Sandbach, who lost her five-day-old son Sam in 2009, labelled miscarriages a "silent killer" and cautioned that too little support was offered to the estimated 200,000 mothers and their families affected each year.

The MP for Eddisbury insisted a "sustained public health campaign" informing parents of the known risks linked to baby loss was needed.

Will Quince, who co-chairs the new all-party parliamentary group on baby loss, said his son was diagnosed with the rare chromosomal disorder, Edwards' syndrome, at his 20-week scan.

The Tory MP for Colchester told the Commons his son was "an incredible little fighter" who eventually lost his life at more than 40 weeks old, in the last moments of labour.

It would have been his second birthday on Wednesday.

Mr Quince said: "There is no experience, in my view, worse than seeing your wife give birth to a lifeless baby.

"It is something that never leaves you and every single day, I think about my son.

"I think about what he would have been like on his second birthday, I imagine a small boy running round our house causing havoc, winding up his sisters.

"It's not to be, but every single day you live with that grief. Fathers need that support too."