In brief: Jersey’s Hospital Maternity Unit is being illuminated in pink and blue this evening as part of Baby Loss Awareness Week. A local mother, Lauren, is funding a specialist privacy pram to help bereaved families spend time with their babies sensitively. The Health Department supported around 170 families affected by baby loss in 2025.
Lights On for the Littlest Lives
The Parade entrance of Jersey’s General Hospital and the windows of its Maternity Unit are being lit up in pink and blue from 7pm this evening, Thursday 15 October, as part of Baby Loss Awareness Week. The nationwide campaign aims to highlight the support available to families who have experienced the loss of a baby, and to encourage open conversations about bereavement at what is, for many, the most devastating moment of their lives.
The Health Department reports that in 2025 it supported around 170 families affected by baby loss, a figure that encompasses early pregnancy loss, ectopic and molar pregnancies, terminations and stillbirths. That is a sobering number for a small island community, and it underlines just how many Jersey families carry this kind of grief quietly and often invisibly.
A Mother’s Gift in Honour of Aoife Rose
Alongside the illuminations, a local mother named Lauren is personally funding a specialist 4louis privacy pram for the Maternity Unit. The pram is designed to allow grieving families to spend time with their babies outside of the ward in a sensitive and dignified way, something Lauren knows from painful personal experience would have made a difference.
Lauren’s daughter, Aoife Rose, was born sleeping, and she spoke movingly about the difficulty of even the simplest tasks in the immediate aftermath. “Leaving the room for simple tasks, such as a walk for fresh air or to get a coffee, felt incredibly hard,” she told the Jersey Evening Post. She credited Jersey Maternity, the charity Philip’s Footprints, and Health and Care Jersey counsellor Karina with providing “the most unbelievable support” to her and her husband.
“So if providing the pram for Jersey Maternity can help families in the future going through a heartbreaking loss, then that’s the least I can do in honour of our daughter, Aoife Rose,” Lauren said. It is a quietly extraordinary act of generosity, turning personal grief into something that will comfort others for years to come.
The Support Network Behind the Ward
The Maternity Unit’s offering for bereaved families goes well beyond the physical. The Jersey Evening Post reports that the unit provides specialist care, a dedicated family room, follow-up visits from community midwives, counselling, and partnerships with Philip’s Footprints, Jersey Hospice Care and Jersey Talking Therapies.
Midwife Colette McGirl emphasised that the team understands grief does not end at the hospital door. “We know that baby loss affects the whole family and that grief does not end when someone leaves hospital,” she said. “To anyone grieving the loss of a baby, we want you to know that we remember your baby, and we recognise you as a parent.”
Those are words that will mean a great deal to the families who have walked those corridors. Baby Loss Awareness Week, McGirl added, is also an opportunity for the organisation itself to reflect on how it cares for those going through pregnancy loss.
Source: Jersey Evening Post
