CNWL launches Milton Keynes Maternity Trauma Loss and Care service

MK M-TLC seeks to offer support to women and pregnant people who have experienced trauma during pregnancy, have a severe fear of childbirth or who have lost a baby during pregnancy or within the first year.

The event, which took place at the Academic Centre in Milton Keynes University Hospital, featured a number of speakers including Jen Coates, Director of Bereavement Support and Volunteering at Sands.

She spoke passionately about how bereaved parents are often left to manage other people’s feelings after losing a baby rather than being allowed to come to terms with their own emotions.

“Giving birth to death is against the order of things,” she said. “When someone dies you have the opportunity to talk about the times you shared, but because these parents have never met their baby they find it particularly isolating.”

Gloria Aldridge, Service Manager, Jenny Wilson-Principal Psychologist and Caroline Kintu, Emotional Wellbeing Midwife, who make up the MK M-TLC Team, also described their journey so far and gave a vision of how they see the service developing in the future.

The team’s target is to treat 50 patients by 1 April 2023. However, they’ve already seen 45 patients in the past seven months so are well on track to exceed this goal.

Jenny hopes that further funding will be available to enable the recruitment of more practitioners and the expansion of service provisions.

 “We want to avoid long waiting lists,” she said. “Birth trauma and loss isn’t really conducive to long waits, so once you recognise that someone is ready for our intervention then the last thing we want to do is put them on a very long waiting list.

“And we want to continue delivering a gold-standard service in collaboration with our partner agencies.”