Emma Barnett: ‘Why I wanted a baby loss certificate’

The government has introduced new baby loss certificates. The certificates are part of the government#39;s Pregnancy Loss Review. Zoe Clark-Coates, founder of the baby loss charity, Mariposa Trust, is one of the first women to apply. She has been campaigning for nine years, based on her own painful experiences.

Filling in the form only took a matter of minutes but it was far more emotional than I had anticipated. One of the questions you are asked is when you lost your baby, and I realised I didn#39;t actually know what month or even year - despite it happening not that long ago, in January 2022. I had hoped you couldn#39;t lose a baby that had taken five rounds of IVF to create. I somehow thought the gruelling process to arrive at this much-longed for outcome would magically inoculate me against the frightening reality that one in four pregnancies end in loss.

Weirdly, I was meant to be cooking a roast chicken that night. Time was now starkly divided between before that moment in the sonographer#39;s room. I stumbled out of the clinic, into the harsh sunlight of a busy London road, knowing that our dream was over. Like millions of women before me, the baby lived within me and died within me.

My body and mind were the keeper and witness. But beyond medical forms, conversations with my stunned and deeply saddened husband, my texts to people about our loss and my memories of such a bond, nothing else to show the whole episode happened. From February 2024, people in England who have lost a baby before 24 weeks of pregnancy can apply for a certificate in memory of their baby. You must be at least 16 years old and your pregnancy ended on or after 1 September 2018.

You do not need to provide any medical proof, so can still apply if your loss was not recorded by a medical team or doctor. Women and our stories are missing from many historical records because for so long we simply weren#39;t deemed worthy of properly recording. Our gains, losses and even our names lived and died with us. Our loss is part of our family story and now there can be a piece of official paperwork to document it.

Here was some physical proof and something external to me which my husband and our children - when they are older - could read. I think these certificates could also make people#39;s grief more accessible to others, as well as offering something more official to mark all that a pregnancy can mean and help memorialise it too. The government has limited who can apply in England to those who suffered losses from 2018 onwards. In time it will open to all, and many women have been in touch with us to say they will be applying to mark losses that happened decades ago.

Our certificate has now been filed in the folder alongside the birth certificates of our other children.