As a multiple birth loss parent I was determined to make a difference in the way other multiple birth loss families were treated by health care professionals, friends, family, as well as the wider community. It was appalling to think that in my own situation, which had occurred in 1990, that giving birth to both a living and a deceased child could evoke so much fear, ignorance and at times, contempt by those around me. However, it was far more appalling to hear that such behaviour had not changed in over a decade since I had experienced my own loss, when a case came to my attention in 2001.

To hear news from a bereavement care colleague about a South Australian health care professional who had treated the family of twins, where one had lived and the other had died, like it had almost been a personal inconvenience in time and paperwork was most devastating indeed. It was bad enough to hear of how poorly the health care professional had handled the deceased child’s body, let alone the fact that there was an initial refusal to complete paperwork that was required to be done by law. However, when I heard that the deceased child’s body had gone ‘missing’ for the best part of twenty four to forty-eight hours, being shunted around one of Australia’s capital cities like a forgotten postal delivery, such immoral behaviour became the spark that ignited my determination to do something to try and fix an extremely broken link in our health care system.

Here was a situation where a mother had given birth to twins. As in my own pregnancy, the mother was aware that one of her babies had died, and had to continue with the pregnancy for as long as possible in order to give the surviving child a viable chance. Although this sounds extremely cruel, in making a mother endure that type of experience, there is no easy answer to any component of multiple pregnancy loss. You just have to cope with what gets thrown at you, and pray that you get through.

When the little boy who had died was delivered, his body remained intact in its membrane. Normally, if this has not broken, a medical professional carefully removes it. Unfortunately in this instance, the medical professional did not feel the need to do so, and literally just ‘plonked’ the deceased child’s body, membrane and all, into a nearby plastic bucket, on which a lid was hurriedly fixed. All this occurred within full view of the extremely upset and traumatised mother.