Fort Regent lit blue and pink for Baby Loss Awareness Week

Credit: BAM Perspectives

The Fort Regent is being lit pink and blue for the final time tonight (15 October), to show support for people in Jersey who have suffered the loss of a baby.

This is just one of the events taking place as the island comes together for Baby Loss Awareness Week (October 9 - 15). 

At 7pm on Tuesday evening, people in Jersey are invited to light a candle and leave it burning for an hour in remembrance of babies across the world that died too soon. 

Participants will be part of a global 'Wave of Light', a worldwide show of support from thousands across the world. 

Earlier this week, 250 people joined the annual Starlight Walk, raising awareness of baby loss. 

It raised a record-breaking £7000 for local charity Philip's Footprints, which provides remembrance services, bereavement counselling and memory boxes to islanders going through the loss of a child. 

It recently hosted a bereavement care training day, which was attended by 80 islanders working across the community.

Jo Nash, Founder of Philip's Footprints hopes the various awareness events around the island and across the world will start up conversations about the difficult topic of baby loss: 

"I think it really offers people the opportunity to, if they know someone who's lost a baby, to mention that - to say, 'look, we haven't forgotten'. 

"That's really important, on what can be a very lonely - a very isolating journey.

"I accept that for a lot of people it is really difficult to start a conversation like this. You don't want to upset someone.

"You're not going to remind someone they've lost a baby because they will always remember it.

"It's difficult to have the right words, and you're worried you might say the wrong thing, but 'I'm sorry' is a really good place to start.

"Anything that begins with 'at least' is usually a very good thing not to say. 'At least you can get pregnant', 'at least you can have another child', anything like that is something that should not be said at all."

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