Bereaved mum finds peace in writing baby loss blog

A mum who lost her son 18 weeks into her first pregnancy has spoken about how sharing her experience of grief via a blog has helped her with her grief.

Lindsay Donaldson, from Inverness, lost her baby in 2013.

Her blog White Feature Baking - which initially focused on recipes - became somewhere she could express her daily emotions.

She is seeking to highlight her story through a campaign being run by an academic from Loughborough University.

Ms Donaldson said she had used her writing to explore the feelings towards her son and, as time went on, the four babies she lost during subsequent pregnancies.

Ms Donaldson, who now has a six-year-old daughter, said: "There is a stigma around baby loss and people are often worried about saying the wrong thing, so they don't say anything at all.

"I've found writing has let people in my life access my grief and understand how it changes over time.

"I would definitely encourage bereaved parents to give writing a go - even if they decide not to share it anywhere. It can be a way of honouring and remembering your baby."

Her story forms part of a campaign by Loughborough University's Dr Tamarin Norwood, whose research looks at how bereavement and creativity can be combined.

She teamed up with the charity Held in Our Hearts, which helped Ms Donaldson.

They worked together to create memory writing cards after identifying that there were few specialised writing resources for parents whose babies have died.

The cards were distributed across Scotland in support packages to families in hospitals that had just experienced baby loss and trialled in several writing workshops.

Dr Norwood said: "Very often parents find that because their loss isn't really acknowledged socially, they're not really sure what they have lost.

"If parents can learn to understand that it's natural to feel as awful as they do and that these lives are worthy of many, many stories - rich, long, big stories - then that can really improve bereavement outcomes."

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