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Pete's story

Episode 11: Pete’s Story: Black Baby Loss

 

 

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This episode is dedicated to Danté ♥.

Episode Guest - Pete Reeves

“Born to A Trinidadian mother and Barbadian father, I am a product of the Caribbean made in the UK. I am non white, so I am any label other than white you wish to give me.

A problem solver, which led me to a career as a Product Manager. Also, on a path, after my pain, doing everything I can to solve the problem of the disproportionate baby loss, suffered within the NHS by non whites. I am a husband, a father, a brother, son. I am a member of this village; together we are stronger, join me.” 

 

Summary:

At 25 weeks pregnant, Pete’s wife Gina knew something was wrong. Their concerns unaddressed by health professionals, they suffered the loss of their baby boy Danté. With incredible calm and candour, Pete shares the harrowing series of failures that led to this terrible outcome, and we discuss the glaring health inequalities that black parents face during pregnancy and birth. 

Resources and topics covered:

Tommy’s charity is dedicated to finding causes and treatments to save babies’ lives as well as providing trusted pregnancy and baby loss information and support. Statistical data is available here.

The intergenerational impact of baby loss in Black communities by Leah Letwin, April 2024.

Black Box Thinking, Matthew Syed.

Hudgell Solicitors are the firm supporting Pete and Gina’s claim.

No one Famous Tailoring, Leyton, who made Danté’s suit.

Ebony Bonds on Instagram. Ebony Bonds Bereavement Peer Support is dedicated to providing a safe and nurturing space for families who have experienced the heart-breaking loss of a baby.

Find out about Hilary Grierson, the Highgate Baby Loss Tree and the work of North East London SANDS.

Want to listen to Soca (Soul of calypso) music to bring some light in? Listen here and here or search for Soca on any music platform! And to listen to Pete, Gina, and Danté’s special song, Bacchanalist by Kerwin Du Bois, you can find it here.

Additional Resources:

Sands Surveys of Parents and Families from Black and South Asian Communities: Full Report Summer 2021 (SANDS)

Experiences of bereaved parents from South Asian and black communities Report 2022 (SANDS)








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Series 2 – Episode 11 Transcript:

PETE’S STORY

Debbie Enever, Host

Pete Reeves, Guest

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Bereaved Parents Club podcast. It’s the club none of us want to be members of, but here we are. My name is Debbie and I’m a bereaved parent. This podcast is for all of us to share and celebrate the stories of our children and offer support to each other. Each episode will explore topics that have relevance to us as we navigate the world as bereaved parents.

Whether your loss was last week, last month, last year, or even last century, you are welcome here. And whether your child was a baby, a youngster, a teenager, an adult, or even a parent themselves, you are welcome here. Please be aware that each episode will deal with themes of death and loss.[00:01:00] 

In the UK, black babies are twice as likely to die in the first 28 days compared to white babies. Recent statistics also show that black and black mixed heritage pregnancies are 43 percent more likely to end in miscarriage. And these parents are also almost 50 percent more likely to experience stillbirth.

These terrible health outcomes are really shocking. And in this episode, we’re going to hear one family’s story. Pete will tell us about what happened to him and his wife, Gina, and their baby, Danté . Content warning, there are graphic physical and medical descriptions illustrating a very traumatic experience, so please be mindful of this before continuing.

We’ll also be taking a break roughly halfway through, as this is a long episode, and a little midpoint breather seems like a good idea.[00:02:00] 

Today, our guest is Pete Reeves. I approached Pete after seeing him take part in an event to mark Black Baby Loss Awareness Week back in May this year. It was a really positive event called Celebrating the Black Baby Loss Community, and it was hosted online by Tommy’s Charity. And after seeing that, I knew it would be really helpful to have Pete on as a guest to share his story with everyone.

So Pete, welcome. 

Thank you. 

Thanks for agreeing to talk to us today. 

Oh, thanks for inviting me. 

It’s my pleasure. We always find pleasure is a really weird word to use at this point, but we also always know what we mean as well. What I’m going to ask you to do, if it’s okay to kind of get us started, is to tell your story, and then we’re going to perhaps look a bit more into some of the experience of the Black Baby Loss community.

So, if it’s okay, Pete, can I hand over to you to tell us about yourself and your story, please? [00:03:00] 

Yeah, sure. Um, I actually, when you said that you were going to ask me to, uh, tell you about myself and my story and actually Danté ‘s story, um, I started making notes. And I realized this could go on for hours, um, so I’ll try and try not to go on for too long.

But, yes, my name is Peter Reevesor to be precise, Peter John Theodore Reeves. And, I am the dad of Danté  Ruben Theodore Reeves, uwhose sunrise and sunset was on the 21st of April, 2022. So unfortunately we did lose him on the same day that he came into the earth. And I was going to talk about, kind of the beginnings of the journey and, it leads into that, treatment of non white people in healthcare service, and me and my wife have been trying for a while to have a child, uh, unfortunately we’ve had a few miscarriages, also, um, ectopic [00:04:00] pregnancies, and we tried IVF as well, and that didn’t work for us, uh, so when she got pregnant this time, we knew what time period usually things go bad for us.

And we had gotten through that time period, after she told me that she was pregnant and we were doing everything we could to just make sure that it was a, it was a good birth. We went to the hospital. She did start to bleed. during pregnancy. So we, she went to the hospital quite a few times. Sometimes it was light, sometimes it was heavy.

Pretty much every time that she went, they said it’s normal for women to bleed, , through pregnancy and just to keep an eye on it and not to worry. But we went and had a private appointment with some people down in, uh, Essex somewhere, I can’t remember exactly where it was, and they checked her out and said they can’t see where the bleeding is coming from, but it’s definitely worth going back to the hospital again to try and find out more and investigate it.

Whilst we were there as well, we did an ultrasound and took [00:05:00] a recording of his heartbeat and put it into a teddy. Um, so when you squeeze a teddy, you can hear his heartbeat. So we took that home and we’d gotten to the point where we thought, actually, this is gonna go well for us. Uh, we started to do lots of stuff like she started to plan or get her friends to help her plan the baby gender reveal.

And, uh, I had also got in touch with  – because we’re from the Caribbean, so I’m half Trinidadian, half Bayesian. My mom and dad are born over there. I was born here, so a little lesson. And my wife’s family were born in Guyana. So it’s South America, but they’re the only, official English speaking South American country.

So they’ve got a link to the Caribbean and that goes all the way back to slavery. So they consider themselves to be part of the Caribbean as well as South America, um, and because we have that heritage, and there’s a music that comes from that area called Soca music, [00:06:00] we listen to Soca and there’s a Soca artist at the time who had a song I liked, and I decided to get in touch with them and ask them if they could do the reveal so that they would actually tell us what the gender, tell my wife what the gender was.

I hadn’t told her anything and I kind of set it all up. And unfortunately, it was kind of, I think it was a week after that weekend. I think it was a Monday, the first, after that weekend, I’d got the video recording back and I was really happy that I was going to share it and stuff. That’s when everything started to go wrong.

And, uh, my wife had pains during the night. And then in the morning, I think it was about three o’clock in the morning. She said, I mean, I need to go to the hospital and she just knew something wasn’t right, bleeding. She decided to have a shower. We always think that this comes from the black community, but, um, when you need to go to hospital or if you’re going out, leaving the house or anything like that, you always have to be clean, have a shower and make [00:07:00] sure that you’re presentable cause you don’t know who, what could happen to you and somebody might see you.

So for her, it was really important that she had a shower and got ready. And got changed. And for me, I was still kind of in a daze because it was quite early and she’d been getting ready and I just got up and got the Uber. And for me, that’s, that’s not normal because I always have to have a shower. I spend about an hour in the shower.

So for me, it was just like, I just need to get her to the hospital because she needs to go. And at the time I didn’t drive, so we had to call an Uber. The Uber came, and this is where kind of the part of the story, um, where I think the non white part of the health care system kicks in a little bit.

And I called the hospital on the way there. We spoke to – and also sorry, also, the failures of the NHS at the moment and how it’s been mismanaged. So it’s political as well a little bit – So I called the [00:08:00] hospital as we were heading there. Um, somebody answered and sounded pretty, I would say, exhausted and also flippant about anything that I was saying.

So I said that we’re coming in because my wife is bleeding and she’s having contractions as well. I think that at that point, at that point they were like, two minutes apart. We’re in an Uber. So we’re on our way and first thing she said was, ‘have you had a COVID test?’ I said, no, and I was a bit shocked because I was thinking, well, I’ve just told you that my wife’s in labour and she’s bleeding and we’re coming in, it’s 25 weeks. We’re coming in. And the first thing you’re asking me is about COVID test. You’re not asking me what her name is. You’re not going to get her records or anything like that. So I said, ‘no, we haven’t had a chance to have a COVID test. Are you telling me I need to go back home and have a COVID test before we get there?’

And then she said, ‘well, no, we don’t usually see people, without a COVID test. And to be honest, we prefer people to give us a 48 hours notice.’ [00:09:00] Uh, and I said, well, how was she supposed to give you that? Ths is an emergency. We’re coming in cause it’s an emergency. We’re not sitting in an Unber just because we want to.

Um, and then she said, ‘okay, then so tell me these things’. So she went through some of the checks, um, asking me how far apart her contractions were, what any of her problems were etc. And she didn’t, in that whole conversation, she didn’t actually ask me for my wife’s medical number or her name. 

So we turned up at the hospital and this was during COVID, so there was somebody at the door kind of screening people as they go through, and it was really early in the morning. I think it was, seven. It was about seven o’clock in the morning. So the hospital was pretty empty. We turned up and asked for where we need to go. Um, and the lady told us to go to a particular ward.

I can’t remember. I think it was a maternity ward. Clinic, sorry. So we had to go up [00:10:00] escalators, though, sorry, the escalators was, well, uh, switched off, so we had to climb the stairs, walk along. It’s quite a long walk. Um, my wife’s doubling over in pain, um, at the moment while this is all happening, and I’m trying to reassure her.

And this is, the part, from my side, the part where I feel like I wanted to not be a problem was because you always hear of black men being seen as aggressive and argumentative if we voice our opinion, so I tried not to. I tried to trust in the hospital and trust in the people that were there. Uh, my wife was saying things like she’s going to push him out and I was like, no, no, no, wait, wait, let them see you and stuff like that. Cause I thought they need to see her. They’re the professionals. They know what they’re doing. And I didn’t want to be that, what would be deemed as the angry black man in the room. So. Being nice to everyone as we are normally anyway, but extra nice because we thought that might help.

So I got to the [00:11:00] receptionist, uh, she asked her to go to the toilet and do a urine sample and, um, sit down and then a nurse will see us. She obviously couldn’t do a urine sample because she just couldn’t pass urine. Um, and this was the first time that we’d got to this point in a pregnancy. So we had no idea, and because it was 25 weeks, we still hadn’t had all the prep, so we had no idea that, what we were told later is that it’s physically impossible for a woman, once she’s started to have contractions, it’s impossible for them to, to go to the toilet.

So she’s struggling to try and get this urine sample out, she can’t do it. Um, so she sits down, comes out of the toilet, sits down, and I get a glass of water. We’re waiting for the nurse to see us, and she’s just fidgeting around in her seat. Um, my wife’s fidgeting around in her seat, because she just can’t take the pain, and she’s telling me that, um, something’s not right, and, and everything, so I’m trying to calm her down.

At the same time and then the [00:12:00] nurse finally comes out so it’s midwife. I think it’s they’re wearing pink So I think there’s different levels of midwives and she was wearing pink and we went in to the room again She was very flippant and my wife was saying that I’m in pain 25 weeks and bleeding, contractions are happening and she basically asked us a couple of really simple questions like what her name was and ‘how long have you been having this pain for?’ Stuff that my wife had really told her. And she was typing into the computer, then she asked my wife to lay down, she, she listened to the stethoscope to her belly, but then she also decided to do, um, uh, kind of a ultrasound, uh, sound so that she could hear with, um, but we couldn’t see anything, but she could hear the baby’s heartbeat.

So she said, well, it’s all fine. Everything’s fine, but we’ll get a doctor to see you anyway. I was thinking, well, it’s not fine, she’s bleeding and she’s having contractions. Not, but you’ll get a doctor to see her anyway. Like, we need a doctor to see her with a bit more urgency. Then the [00:13:00] phone rang in the room and she picked it up.

And then she started speaking to what must have been another patient and she was flippant in the same way that the person who had answered the phone when I was in the taxi and it put two and two together and realized it was the same person. So, going back to the kind of struggles of the NHS, she’s obviously getting these, um, overflow calls coming into her when they should be going somewhere else, but she’s having to deal with them at the same time as dealing with patients. She hasn’t got time. She’s frustrated and, and working hard, I guess, but that then rolls on to like the treatment that you give your patients and the treatment. So after she’d finished speaking to that person, she just said to my wife to wait in the corridor, try and give a urine sample and a doctor will come and see her, um, soon.

So we go back outside, sit on the chair for a bit. And then she says, come with me to try and do the urine sample. So I go with her into the toilet and she sits down and she’s trying to do [00:14:00] this urine sample. She just can’t, and all of a sudden waters just go everywhere in the toilet. And then she’s panicking, and I’m kind of thinking, what do I do?

And she’s like, I don’t know if he came out. Oh, I don’t know if the baby came out, because she still didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl. I don’t know if the baby came out. Can you check the toilet? So I’m having a look in there, and I can see lots of stuff, and there’s blood in there. But I can’t see anything that looks like a baby in there.

But I didn’t really know what I was kind of looking for I didn’t know how formed he was going to be, um, so I wasn’t too sure what I was looking for, but I couldn’t see anything. So I don’t think anything is there. Let me go and get the nurse and I’ll be back. So I run out, went around to reception and said that her waters are broken and she’s standing there. Can a nurse come and see her? And she said, Okay, we’ll get someone. We’ll get someone right now. So then I go back to my wife, and we’re waiting there, and we’re waiting for at least five minutes, and nobody came. My wife’s standing there now, in a pool of blood, and it was like, a lot of blood. [00:15:00] So I’m getting a bit concerned, and just thinking, why hasn’t anyone come yet?

But then at the same time, I don’t want to leave her, because She’s just standing there in a pool of blood and, um, there was this kind of stringy thing hanging out of her and we didn’t know what it was. We have no idea. So I run around again. I say, look, she’s standing in a pool of blood. There’s a stringy thing hanging out of her, is a nurse coming or not?

And then she’s like, I’m going to get one. I’m going to get one. I think you need one now. And she’s like, okay, I’ll get one. So I’ll be with you. I go back in again. We’re waiting for about five minutes and no one’s come yet. So I go back around again and say that. I, we need a nurse now and she said, okay, and then she came with me back to see my wife.

She saw my wife and then she went off and got a nurse. So the nurse comes along, has a look at my wife. She says, okay, can you pull your trousers up for me? Let’s, um, go around to the ward. So my wife has to pull the trousers up and the doors open at this time. So anyone in the waiting area could see her.

Um, [00:16:00] so it’s like a dignity thing there as well from my wife, but obviously at that point, we’re not thinking about it. But you kind of in the in your background in his subconscious, you are you like, I don’t want everyone to see me, but she pulled it up, put up a trousers and walks round. We walk around to another area where there’s a bed, but it was it was really dimly lit.

And there was a bed that they asked us to get on. So she got onto the bed and it was one of those with wheels and stuff. So. Then, again, more failings, I feel, of the NHS. Then she was seen by a junior doctor. 

Um, and the way that I knew he was junior is because my mum used to be a nurse. So she was a dermatology nurse for a very, very long time and a specialist. So I kind of grew up with her talking shop and understanding what some terminology meant. Um, he had a look at my wife and he couldn’t see anything. So he had a midwife with him. and he had his little pen torch and he was like, ‘I can’t see anything’. And I was thinking, well, that’s because the room is really dimly lit.

You can’t see anything. [00:17:00] That’s why. And then one of the other, one of the nurses with him was like, ‘what’s- what’s that?’ And he was like, ‘I don’t know. I can’t really see.’ Uh, and then he said, I’ll, um, I’ll have to – obviously the baby’s coming – but I’ll need to ask my boss what we do. And as soon as he said boss, I realized he’s a junior doctor.

He’s, there’s no way anyone’s going to call in the medical profession and call someone their boss. They usually refer to them as their title so that you get that kind of, um, understanding and appreciation that it’s been escalated as somebody with more experience is going to come and deal with this.

Whatever needs to be done or somebody who knows about whatever needs to be done is going to be the person in charge of you. And while this was going on, again, the nurses started asking us, have we had COVID tests? They gave my wife a COVID test while she was on the bed and she’s bleeding all over the bed. They’re giving a COVID test. 

He went away. One of the nurses pushed the wheelchair just outside the cubicle. And my wife said, is that for me? [00:18:00] And I looked at the bed and the bed had wheels and I thought, well, the state that you’re in, no, I don’t think that’s for you. They’ll just wheel you around. And then about two minutes later, I had this voice from outside, ‘Can you get in the wheelchair, please?’

And I was like, well, sorry, that’s my fault. Because again, not wanting to be the angry black man, I said, sorry, that’s my fault. I told her, no, because I thought you just moved the bed. So then I had to help my wife get out of the bed that she was in and get into the wheelchair.

Then the nurse whizzed her off and I was trying to follow. Um, she’d left her trainers, so I had to run back and get her trainers. And then I kind of lost her for a bit. They pushed her round into another room and it was a big room just with one single bed. So she was on her own, she was put on there. Um, and then they offered her drugs.

And then we saw slowly people coming into the room. So slowly, uh, two nurses came in, checked all the drawers, and then disappeared. And then, uh, another, um, person came in. He had a fiddle around in the corner where they have the [00:19:00] resuscitation area for babies. And then he disappeared. And then they all came in.

And then he introduced himself and said he was there, um, just in case he was needed to help the baby, he was going to be there and he stood in the corner, went back in the corner and then his team came in and then the nurses were asking my wife if she wanted, um, oxygen or whatever at this point. And I haven’t kind of gone through what my wife’s telling me and what’s happening.

But at this point, my wife kind of lost, lost it. She was just like, it’s coming. I need to push it out. I need to push it out. I can feel this thing is burning inside. And it wants to come out and they’re telling her, no, you need to have this injection first, which, um, will make sure that his lungs work – I didn’t realize until after everything that happened and we were talking to people, they said, well, that injection takes like, I think 24 hours or 48 hours to actually kick in anyway. So it’s pretty pointless then by delaying stuff to give you that injection. But it is procedure. [00:20:00] And I think that’s a key thing that I’m mentioning, their procedure, because that comes into play quite a lot later on.

So, she’s given the injection, they ask if she wants oxygen and stuff, and they give me, they give me the oxygen mask, and they say, hold that for her, and she just pushed it away, she wasn’t interested, she knew something was wrong. And other doctors come in, a set of doctors, and they look more senior, so they’ve got green on, and it’s a male and a female.

The female kind of hangs back and the male comes closer and he asks my wife to open her legs. Just at this point she’s like just moving around on the bed and she can’t do anything. She’s not listening to anybody. So they kind of had to force her to lay on the back and open her legs. He’s looking inside and he didn’t really say anything.

He was just looking inside. And then the lady who hung back, the lady doctor, she said, ‘what’s that?’ And he said, oh, that’s I think he said, ‘that’s the membrane’. And then she said, ‘no, no. What’s that though?’ And then he kind of looked closer and [00:21:00] I’m pretty sure he kind of just moved with his fingers – something – and then the baby popped out.

So Danté popped out onto the table and straight away he said ‘prolapsed cord’ and I kind of knew what that meant and I think my wife kind of was out of it so she didn’t take anything but he kept on saying it as he was giving the baby over. So the clamping and cutting of the umbilical cord and he took the baby over to the other team who then started to resuscitate Danté and he went over to that team.

Some of the nurses came over to her, they were looking after her. Trying to tend to her and whilst they were resuscitating, they asked, um, wife if she knew what the baby was, if it was male or female. And um, she said no, um, but I knew, so they said, do you want to know? And um, I told her it’s, it’s a boy and they tried resuscitating for, I think it’s probably about 10 minutes.

And then they came over and said that this is what’s [00:22:00] going on. His lungs haven’t kicked in. He hasn’t taken a breath. So, um, We need to either stop now, or we can continue there is a possibility of problems because he hasn’t had any oxygen in his body, so it could lead to some brain injuries, etc. Just have to warn you of that.

And we said, ‘Okay, please continue’. So they continued for another, I think it was about another three minutes, 13 minutes in total. And then they turned to us and said that we don’t think that we’re going to bring him back. Would you like us to continue? Me and my wife kind of looked at each other and knew that it was better to let him go. So we just said no. So that was how we lost him. 

There was loads of stuff that just went on in that, that maybe I didn’t touch on. But when we sat down and we thought about everything that happened… So in terms of support, my best man, he’s like my best friend. He just moved into the area. So he was really close and I kind of called him and just[00:23:00] kind of just almost broke down and just said that ‘we’ve lost him’ and he’s like, ‘I’ll be there’. So, uh, he came out of the hospital and then my wife’s, um, Maid of Honour. Uh, she lives further away, but, my wife let her know what happened and she was, she came down as well to hospital. So they were both there.

So both of our best friends were probably there for us and supported us. I think at that point then I kind of kicked into ‘what needs to be done’ mode and maybe didn’t grieve as much as I should have. I did grieve, so I was obviously crying that night. I tried not to show my wife how upset I was while she was in the hospital and everything.

And then we came home and my friend said, do you want me to stay around for a little bit longer? I was like, no, it’s okay. You go home. Thank you for helping us. And her friend stayed with us. And then her husband [00:24:00] joined us the next day. And we were at that time, we were redecorating the house again already for Danté, so the house was a mess. And they just came around to start cleaning. Um, so the, my best man’s white, and her Maid of Honour is black. So from the Caribbean community as well, um, but born here. Um, so it’s kind of like just saying that they did, they just came, they just started cleaning, started cooking, making us food. Just looking after us. So that was really nice of them to do. 

And that kind of family support, uh, was there my mom and my dad and my sister live in Bedford. Um, so they moved out from North London a while ago. Uh, my dad’s got Alzheimer’s and so my mom’s pretty much his carer in like her pensioner years. She’s just caring for my dad, so they were further away. So I fully understood that they couldn’t just drop everything and be there. But having a friend there was kind of enough for me and just knowing that they were there [00:25:00] in spirit was enough for me. My wife’s parents had arranged to come and visit us that following weekend.

So they came and they were with us. After so we had a few days of just my wife’s friend there staying with us looking after us and then her parents arrived the weekend after, um, and looked after us and then started helping just get everything in place. 

And that’s I think that’s the hardest part of it. And the reality that life goes on. Everyone else’s life is going on as well. So one of the first calls that we got was from the council asking us to register his birth and his death and that’s something you see you’re just not thinking of. And then that call comes in and you’re like, okay, that only came two days after it all happened.

Um, so now we need to get ourselves together and get all of our bits and pieces together. Then we had to take our passports and identification and stuff down to go and register him. And at the point of registering his death, [00:26:00] um, we weren’t told by the hospital what happened, but we saw on the death certificate that they put down that he was prematurely born and he had tiny lungs is what they put on the death certificate.

So when we saw that we said don’t agree with that We’re not signing this document because we don’t agree with that. And the lady desk at the register said if that’s what you feel then don’t sign it, go back to the hospital. We’ll get in touch with the hospital as well and we’ll let them know that you’re not signing it and you don’t agree.

And the reason why I didn’t agree was because – and I’m not a doctor, I have no medical training, yes, my mum was a nurse – but you didn’t see his lungs. I know you didn’t see his lungs, so how, how do you know that they’re tiny? When he came out, he was perfectly formed. And it looked like there was nothing wrong with him. And I heard the doctor say ‘prolapsed cord’. So I knew. That it wasn’t that he had tiny lungs and they hadn’t put that on the death certificate.

So then we had to go back to the hospital. We had to get in touch with them to do an [00:27:00] autopsy. But also we had to talk to the one of the consultants that were there. So this is the ironic thing. So one of the doctors who was in the room, he didn’t make the call to me because he had COVID. So a colleague, another consultant was calling me and he said, um, I’m afraid he couldn’t call you because he has COVID.

And then I was thinking to myself, all the fuss that you made of me and my wife, if we had COVID and you had a doctor in the room who potentially was carrying COVID at that point. So yeah, the irony was just amazing. What I said to this doctor who called me, ‘do you mind if I record this?’ Cause I’d already gone into the, the kind of that mode of, I was beating myself up because I didn’t become the angry black man.

And I thought, actually, if I was, maybe things would be different, but you don’t know that, but maybe things would be different. So, um, for me, it was like, okay, well, you know, it wasn’t our fault that this [00:28:00] happens, it may not be anybody’s fault that this happened, but there were definitely failings. So can I record this conversation?

And he said, ‘you can, but we don’t usually do that’. And he basically tried to talk me out of recording him. And I said, ‘well, I’ll be happier having this conversation with you if I was recording it. Um, so just want to let you know that I’m going to record it’ and he said, ‘okay, that is fine’. So I got to record it and he basically, he said, ‘are you a doctor?’ And I said, ‘no, but you didn’t see his lungs. So I know that he didn’t have tiny lungs or you don’t know that he had tiny lungs’. And he said, ‘oh, okay. But, um, he was premature. So he was probably going to have tiny lungs’. I was like, ‘Oh, you don’t know, do you? That’s the reason why we’re asking for you to do an autopsy and we’re not signing the death certificate until that’s happened’.

So. That all happened, coroner came back and said he was perfectly formed, didn’t have tiny lungs. Prolapsed cord probably assisted in his death, [00:29:00] but also the prematureness of his birth may have assisted in his death, they couldn’t say for sure what caused it. And I think what they’re also hanging to is the fact that they don’t know how long the cord was around his neck for, so they can’t say whether that was a direct cause or not.

My arguments of that end here. We’ve got solicitors involved now. My argument to that is if I put my hands around your neck for 10 seconds, you probably won’t die. If I put my hands around your neck for say 20 minutes, you probably would die. My wife, from the time that we arrived to the time that the doctor said prolapse cord, was at least an hour.

She was standing in the toilets waiting for about 15, 20 minutes while we were waiting for a nurse to come. So, yes, we don’t know when that prolapse cord happened, but that’s not our failing. That’s the hospital. That’s the system. And maybe they were stretched when we had, so we had a clear the air conversation.

Uh, with the lead, and I’m [00:30:00] going to say this wrong, obstetricianists, 

Obstetrician or gynecologist, or one of those, yeah. 

Yeah, so he’s a lead at the hospital, um, he agreed to have a clear the air with us, and the doctor who had COVID, I think was there, who had now recovered, and uh, another lady who was leading the investigation.

So when they cleared the air, they said that, okay, it was a changeover period. So, it may have been that because of the changeover period, certain staff members weren’t available, and it meant that also that the receptionist who was trying to get somebody, she hadn’t had training to raise the alarm. So they’d come up with a list of, I think it’s eight points, which they said that they need to improve on.

One of them was that the receptionist needs to know how to raise the alarm. So in that conversation, which again was recorded as well, I got quite angry because I said ‘medicine and healthcare is a science and science, maths is a science as well, and you use maths in medicine. So you’ve got eight points here, [00:31:00] which you’re telling me that if the hospital could have done stuff better, those things that you could have done better. If we say each one of those points is worth, say, 5%, that’s like a 40 percent increase in the chance of my son surviving. Yeah’. And he said, ‘no, we can’t say that you don’t, we don’t know that’. And I said, ‘yeah, but if you go in probability, the science and maths, if you’ve got a probability, he’s got a better survival rate if these things were in place’.

And I would say that obviously we can’t change what’s happened. What’s happened has happened. But going forwards, you can make sure this doesn’t happen again to anybody else. 

And at that point, so, uh, I’m a, Product manager and one of the things I was reading was this book called ‘Black Box Thinking’ and in the book it talks about the black box and the reason why the aviation world brought the black box into being present and it was because they were losing money in the amount of money they had to pay out to families when planes were falling out of the sky. And planes [00:32:00] were regularly falling out the sky when commercial flights really kicked off.

So for them, they realized this is a lot of money to be losing out in compensation. We need to stop this from happening. And they introduced the black box so that they could learn from their failings. What was going wrong with the planes before they hit? Because there’s no survivors. No one can tell you what happened.

So having a black box means you can now look at what happens and try and rectify that. Make sure it doesn’t happen again. They use that comparison to the healthcare system, and they say at the moment there’s a culture in the healthcare system, um, and they’re looking at the U. S. in this book, but it also applies to the U.K. There’s a culture of not wanting to learn from your failures. There’s a culture of not wanting to take blame. And until that culture changes within our healthcare system where they do take blame and they do want to learn from the failings and they change things. Until that happens, we’re going to continue to have people suffering.

We’re going to continue to have poor healthcare. Because [00:33:00] nobody wants to learn what they’re doing wrong, and we will get things wrong, but we all fail sometimes. And sometimes it isn’t just one person’s fault. And I think this whole situation, it’s not just the lady who was flippant on the phone to me. It’s not just her fault. There’s a whole string of things that are happening, which result in her being like that. It’s not the junior doctor’s fault that he couldn’t see what was going on with my wife and it was dim lighting. Um, that was the hospital’s fault. And it’s not somebody who changes the light bulbs, it’s probably a budget thing. It’s probably how things are being run. So yeah, this book’s amazing. Cause it does all that comparison. And I was telling the, uh, the lead obstetrician about the book. And I was saying that if you guys just took some of the learnings, like if you’re telling me you’ve done eight, you’ve got eight things that you could improve on.

So just take that, improve on them and take the fact that potentially those things could have meant that my son would have survived instead of trying to have a [00:34:00] denial system where you then don’t have to say, yep, my son died because of our fault. And kind of to solicitors and anybody who is listening, I was saying this is not about the amount of compensation that me and my wife can get for us.

I don’t just want to get £2,000 for my son’s passing away. If the hospital don’t admit failure, we take them to court, blah, blah, blah. I don’t just want to walk away with 2000 pounds. They need to – and this is what happens in the aviation world and why they introduce black box – they need to have real fines. They need to have like every baby that passes away at the hands of poor health care service is worth say a million pounds. If you’re hemorrhaging that kind of money and already you’re saying the health care service hasn’t got money to lose then you’re gonna do something But if you’re only having to pay out 2000 pounds or 20,000 pounds, it’s worth it. And I think 20, 000 pounds is actually the legal cap at the moment. So there’s a cap on it, which doesn’t make any sense. Because when you think about [00:35:00] if a human being came into this world and progressed through this world and became model citizen, et cetera, the amount of money in taxes and other things that they would generate it’s pretty low. It’s probably over a million pounds. So it doesn’t make sense that our life is only worth 20, 000 pounds. 

So the legal battle for us is, is about just making sure that this doesn’t happen again, and making sure that the hospital held account for what they did wrong, they make changes to that. And also the kind of on a wider scale, the healthcare service is held accountable for stuff rather than just being able to say, ‘well, we don’t know, we were understaffed, but there’s other reasons why this happened and it’s not our fault’ because there’s also the fact that she was bleeding throughout the pregnancy and nothing was done and again, that could be down to resources. They don’t want to send her on to another department to get further investigations. 

Um, she came into hospitals of a woman in her forties who was pregnant, with a history of miscarriages. That means she needs special treatment when she [00:36:00] arrives and says that she’s bleeding and she’s having contractions. There’s lots of other bits and pieces that happened there, and I’ve gone on for ages about it, but yeah, that’s the story of how we had and lost Danté. 

I mean, firstly, it’s just heartbreaking in, in so many ways, and I am so sorry for your loss and your wife’s loss, and for everything that you went through, because that’s just so harrowing and traumatic and wrong.

Yeah. 

You absolutely have my heartfelt sympathy because that’s just a terrible, terrible outcome in all ways, and I’m so sorry that you all had to go through it. 

Thanks. 

We’re going to take a break right here. So grab a brew, some fresh air, or just a pause until you’re ready to carry on. I will say that part two is also emotional and challenging too, but as always, we’ll aim to leave you okay and ready for the rest of your day by the end of the episode.[00:37:00] 

Welcome back. I hope you’re ready for part two. Where are things now then with you in terms of dealing with the hospital? Is, is there an ongoing case then? Yeah, so there’s an ongoing case. Interestingly, so I have to kind of give a shout out to the bereavement nurse that we had. Her name’s Louise. She was really supportive and helpful and beyond kind of her duties as well.

So she told us everything that was going on, conversations, she was the one who pushed to get that clear of the air meeting to happen, um, because I think, sorry, uh, she worked quite closely with one of the nurses that were in the room at the time, so she had a good understanding of what was happening, what happened, where the failings were, um, so she was very open and honest with us about what was happening.

Um, Uh, [00:38:00] coincidentally after it all, uh, my wife wanted to again, go and see someone private and just figure out what might have happened, what can we do going forwards? The private doctor that we saw, she actually works at the hospital. She’d already heard of our case because she’d heard of the conversations around, uh, what was happening, who was at fault, um, and all the feelings that they had.

And she said that there was a, a critical incident. the investigation that was raised because of it. So we knew already that the hospital knew that they were at fault, but they’re just trying to cover their tracks. But she gave my wife some really good advice on what vitamins she should be taking, with her history, what she should probably be looking to do going forward to try again and when to try again, so she was really nice out of this whole thing, there’s lots of people that have been really positive and we’ve got positivity from, and they’ve got [00:39:00] some solicitors who contacted quite a few solicitors and wrote down everything that happened, and I think a lot of them were scared because it’s the NHS and you’re going up against the NHS and trying to beat them, and if you do manage to beat them, I think the maximum you can win is 20,000 so for a lot of solicitors, it wasn’t worth it. But we managed to find one, um, Hudgell, they’re called solicitors, and they were willing to take on the case. And they’ve been really positive so far, so we’re waiting to see what happens. We’ve submitted our statements to them, and they have got an expert witness who’s looking through them and looking through the whole case, and they’ll give their findings and what they think the outcome might be. Um, hopefully over the next few weeks. 

Uh, I was going to say that a few kind of things, positive things that come out of this. Um, so this is one, but also, um, trying to arrange a funeral. [00:40:00] So my wife kind of, I grieved in terms of crying and being upset with myself. I grieved quite a lot early on. But for her, I think there’s a physical side as well as a mental side. So for her, it took a lot longer, but I kind of switched into that ‘Let’s get things done’ mode once it was needed. So for the funeral Louise, bless her, bought around some, some of these things that they, uh, they look like dresses that you put on a doll, things that you can, um, bury your child in and I was looking at myself, he’s not going in one of those and he was fully formed. So I thought. I’m going to buy some material and tailors and we’ll get a suit made up. So we did that. Uh, so we got all the stuff together and then found these tailors in Leighton called No One Famous. So No One Famous Tailoring took it in, explained what it was for. They did it. They even made some [00:41:00] adjustments to make sure that, because they knew that the body might be a bit rigid. So that, um, it was easy to get on and they didn’t charge us. 

The kindness of people at a very difficult time can be quite overwhelming, can’t it? 

Yeah, because I wasn’t expecting that, and I was thinking, I’ll have to pay for this, so I put some money aside to make sure that I paid for it, and then they just gave it to us, and I was like, what do you mean? And they just gave it to us and, uh, just kind of said condolences, and, we took it away, and it did look amazing. Yeah, and, the, um, funeral I think were amazing as well, really helpful. Also, where we, we got him cremated and unfortunately, because we asked for the autopsy, some parts of him still on slides.

So those parts, the laboratory asked where we wanted them. I didn’t know because at the point, at that point I was contacting solicitors. So I didn’t know, would they need that? Is that going to be needed by solicitors? So I said, [00:42:00] well, I think we might need to keep them for now. So I don’t want to get rid of them, and you dispose of them or whatever, and then we find out actually we needed them. So, the funeral directors took them in their fridge and kept them for us. And then we found the solicitors and they said actually, yeah, we don’t, we don’t need them. You’re okay to do whatever you need to do with them.

And then we were kind of thinking, what do we do with these? And I got in touch with people who can make rings out of ashes and stuff. So, we were thinking, okay, maybe we do that. But they couldn’t. So, the tissue on the slides, they felt like they couldn’t. Get that off and turn them into ashes that need to send it away somewhere to be made into ashes and I didn’t think there was enough material there for it to be put in. My wife wanted to kind of have a final farewell as well to Danté a year later because so that was running on for like a year because she felt like she wasn’t there at the time of it all happening.

She just wasn’t there mentally [00:43:00] and physically. So she wanted to say goodbye again, properly, and it was just the two of us, and she got in touch with the crematory, and we had been searching, wondering what to do with these things for so long, and everyone was telling us that they won’t do anything because it’s too small, and she spoke to someone there, and he, um, I can’t remember his name, but I took him a bottle of rum to say thank you, he said, ‘no, we can do it’, So we took the slides and he, um, they took the tissue off and they cremated it for us and gave us the remaining ashes so we could put them all together.

So he was in one piece. So the moment he’s in one piece with us at home and we’ve got to figure out what we do with him. And one of my ideas that I have that I wanted to do was to plant him as a tree somewhere so that he would grow and we can always go and visit. Yeah, in England they don’t do that yet.

So I think in Italy it’s, um, being done, but in England, and it’s, it’s because the ashes are [00:44:00] not on their own and not beneficial to any plant life. So they need to be turned into soil, to mix in with soil, I think. So that needs to happen and then you can bury them in a growing tree. But I think you can scatter them. There’s places where you can scatter them. 

So it’s caused me tension because in my brain, because, um, now I’m trying to working with our local MP to try and get one, a memorial tree set up in our area so that anyone with baby loss can go and leave something. To just remember their baby. So there’s one in North East London, in Highgate, um, it’s a really nice park and you can walk through it and they’ve just got a tree that’s just dedicated to baby loss, um, and we made a little plaque, so we went into one of those craft stores and got little bits and pieces, a piece of wood and made a plaque for him, um, and hung it on that tree in North London, but then we thought, well, this should be around the whole country, there should be trees around the whole [00:45:00] country so that you don’t have to travel. One should be in your area. So I contacted my local MP, um, and she was really good. She’s conservative and I’m a Labour voter. So she’s been amazing, um, in trying to get this done. She’s, um, obviously not got time to dedicate it all to us.

So she has got her assistant helping us now as well. So he’s liaising with people to try and make sure this happens. But yeah, so, um, trying to get a tree set up and then also trying to figure out, and she’s helping with this as well, trying to figure out where we can start to do that growing of ashes and letting people be turned into trees.

I think that’s a wonderful initiative and it is something that kind of completely crosses political any divides, doesn’t it? Because it hasn’t anything to do with politics and everything to do with being human and wanting to support other humans. So, so I’m really hopeful that, um, That a solution will be found because if that’s what everybody wants, then there’s no reason for it not to kind of come to fruition, no pun intended.

I know that you’ve also been [00:46:00] involved with, uh, SANDS. Now SANDS, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a UK wide charity. SANDS stands for Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Charity. Predominantly working with families who, you know, have experienced baby loss, and I know that you’re involved with them. So do you want to tell me a little bit about how that all came about?

Yeah, uh, so that’s an interesting one, because I hadn’t heard of SANDS before. Uh, when I finally went back to work, some of the people there, one of the people that I worked with, he had been through baby- he hadn’t been through baby loss, he’d been through a really tough time with his, the birth of his son, and he knew about SANDS and he, he advised me to one, use the company therapy service that they have for mental health and take those counselling sessions, and two, to maybe get in touch with SANDS. And I hadn’t heard of SANDS and, um, I think this might go back into the kind of cultural part. I don’t know, didn’t know if I needed them.

[00:47:00] Um, he mentioned they have a football team so you can go along and play football. I haven’t played football for ages and I’ve got a dodgy knee. So for me, I was thinking, I don’t really want to do that. And so I hadn’t heard of them. Uh, my wife, she hadn’t really heard of them either until it all happened that people were suggesting places where we can get help So I think she got in touch with a lady who works at called Patrice at SANDS. 

So Patrice is kind of I think she’s been put in touch in charge of that area to try and help promote SANDS within the non-white communities and the black community and she, she does an amazing job, but one of the things she hadn’t had a black couple who were willing to join in her kind of round table and my wife wanted to join the round table and she said, yeah, my husband would join as well. And so I ended up joining too. And for me it was really useful because for me it helped as a man trying [00:48:00] to understand what my wife is going through, trying to understand why she did certain things, why she was saying certain things. When you’re in the moment and it’s you two, um, that you don’t really get the explanation.

You don’t really understand. So if someone says something and then you say, ‘well, why did you say that?’ They might just snap back or, or whatever. So you don’t get that full kind of what is going on in your head. But listening to other women talk about what they went through and when it was similar to what Gina went through my wife and, um, they were explaining why they did certain things and they were explaining why they said certain things, then it started to make sense for me. Um, so it was really helpful. So for me being, me being there, it was helpful for myself. So selfishly it’s helpful for myself, but I think, um, they’ve mentioned and other people have mentioned that it is helpful for them to hear what’s going on from a man’s point of view. Cause you don’t usually hear that. And especially not from black men with [00:49:00] SANDS. 

We’re part of that group, but some of the mothers in that black round table have decided – with my wife included – decided that they need something a little bit more so some of the failings of SANDS and some of the things that I challenged Patrice on was I said to her, ‘Are you just there to help make the numbers look good? And to help make it look like you’re reaching out to certain communities, how much financial backing do you have to make sure that this happens? And how much power do you have to make sure that this happens?’ Because it’s great having the faces there, but if nothing’s actually happening, if there’s no movement, um, except for you’ve got some publicity you can put up on social media or publicity that you can put up on the website, it’s not making a difference.

And I think some of the mothers felt like that. The group was great to get together, but it wasn’t going as far as they needed it to go. Um, so that’s why they set up. So I say they, because [00:50:00] I’m just, my wife’s just basically pulling me along to these things, but I’m happy to go. So that’s why the mother’s set up, I think they’re trying to make it into an actual organization, a charity called Ebony Bonds. And they’re setting that up to try and make sure that black women have a place to go and to get support and get help with real outcomes. So the walk that they set up, um, was to, to do that, was to say, we can’t just sit around, uh, and discuss stuff, we need to get out there and there’s people that need help. 

And I think that touches on the article that you mentioned. In the black community, we don’t talk enough about stuff. And that is historical. And it does start from slavery and stems from slavery because during slavery, black people were seen as not human. So your pain and your suffering was not seen as pain and suffering. It was just you making a noise. And that hasn’t changed. So the thing that I [00:51:00] always call out is during slavery, if a person, if a slave was not doing, working hard enough or whatever, there’d be whipped to work hard enough to be beaten, maybe even lynched. So they’ll get even more pain. And if they complained about the pain, they’d just be beaten even more or tortured in some way. So their pain wasn’t taken as real pain. It was ignored. And that has made its way into society and into the norms that we still have today. And I think it was only a few years ago that it was taken out of some training books where it said that people of different ethnicities can tolerate different levels of pain.

It was in a nurse’s handbook saying that some people of different ethnicities can handle different levels of pain. And you can tell that so when we’re talking about what happened to my wife, when I’m talking about being an angry black man because I’m saying that we need something done, you could tell that that’s kind of the result is that we don’t want to say anything because all the way back in our history, if we said something would either be ignored [00:52:00] or even more pain will come to us.

And I’m aware that maybe, um, didn’t really explain why I call, why I define it as a white or non white. Um, and for some people they might. It’s like a fight or flight type thing where you might think, well, if the person is blaming white people, then I’m not going to listen because I know that does happen to some people. They don’t want to hear that there’s negativity in their history because they are different from that. So they might not take that on board and then become rejecting anything that’s kind of put forward to them. 

But I do that because I feel like historically it is the world has been built to make sure that one type of person is more superior than another through all of our governments systems banking etc. It’s all being tailored towards a certain way to make sure other people are oppressed and usually those other people are [00:53:00] given labels, which then only divides them further when in reality to make this change we need to make sure that everyone realizes that the balance is weighted towards white people at the moment and we need to tip that so that it is actually balanced and everyone else gets the same treatment.

The article that we’re talking about is a blog which I will put a link to on the web listing so they can read it because it is really It’s a really powerful, it’s a really succinct way of explaining, particularly to white people, about a non white experience and I just think it’s really well written, really accessible, really clear.

You know, I think it’s a really useful learning tool for white people to read, quite frankly. And the walk and talk that you mentioned, Is that gonna happen again? I know this was something that happened in May to kind of coincide deliberately with Black Baby Loss Awareness Week. Is that something that the Ebony Bonds is gonna put on again?

Yeah, so I think they’re [00:54:00] planning more walks, but they don’t want to do it just for the sake of doing it. So I think what they want to do is try and work out a strategy of how do they help as many people as they can, um, without just making it a thing that happens at the moment. They’re all mothers who have lost babies, but they’re not trained professionals in supporting other mothers who have lost babies.

So for them, it’s very important. They feel it’s very important that, um, at least some of them have that training. Uh, some of them already do, but also the others also have that, and anyone that they bring into it has some acknowledgement and understanding of where you can take certain conversations and where you need to know when it’s time to hand off to a professional.

And that walk was really interesting for me because it was, it was a lot of women there and there was only, I think, three men. So I met with two other fathers. And we had a good [00:55:00] discussion afterwards as well about why fathers may not get involved and be vocal. I think for all three of us, and I’m not saying this is the same for every single man, but for all three of us, it was that men tend to try and deal with stuff in their heads with an issue in their heads first and work out what actions I need to take and then they’ll act and they tend not to talk about it.

So they tend not to, until they have an answer to a question, they tend not to say anything, which is slightly different sometimes from the way that we notice our wives deal with stuff. 

Does that lead to a sort of silent struggle then, if they’re not talking about this? 

Yeah, I believe so. I think for some black men who don’t talk about it at all, I believe it is that, that they kind of need to try and work it out in their head, what’s happened, and what do I need to do to fix it? Then it just, yeah, manifests itself inside your head, so you’re not saying anything because you [00:56:00] don’t feel like you have anything to say that’s worth bringing to the conversation. 

I know that there’s sort of more online support groups that might be more accessible these days than a kind of turn up somewhere. But I don’t know how prevalent they are or how well attended they are or, or again, what their point is. Like you say, having something just for the sake of having something doesn’t take it anywhere, does it? So, I’m not really sure where things are up to in that way. But I do know that, you know, there are online groups now where there weren’t ten years ago.

So there might be some small positive steps being made, perhaps particularly younger people taking things on and going, well, our generation is not going to sit around and be quiet and we know how to work TikTok, so we’re going to do stuff. Um, I don’t know if that might be a kind of hopeful sign for the future.

Yeah, hopefully. There’s a lot of stuff in there. So I think, yes, generations are changing. I think non white people born in the UK can. over generations tend to forget what [00:57:00] happened to them previously. When you’ve got people who are non white saying, ‘let’s send everyone to Rwanda who’s an immigrant’ when their own, uh, family was immigrants to this country, then you start to realize there’s a massive disconnect.

It’s sometimes maybe it’s not a bad disconnect, I think some people will say, well, that just proves multiculturalism works because some people have changed their mindset to now think that they are fully British, fully English, and they have the same expectations and opportunities open to them. When in reality, what we’re saying is, if you look at the way the building blocks of oppression, um, and how that’s actually cemented into institutions. Like we mentioned in that book, in the training book, it’s cemented in there that different ethnicities can have different levels of pain and stuff. We’re still running on a manual where we are not as equal as we think we are. So when you think you are equal and you have, uh, so when people think [00:58:00] we’re going to change things, maybe they don’t think they’re going to change things, they just think actually everyone should have the same level of care, and they don’t see it as they’re being oppressed in any way, because they don’t realize that, if that makes sense. Because they’re of a generation that has never been oppressed or hasn’t actually felt that oppression in reality, and instead it’s undercover, so they don’t really realize it until something happens, and then they think, actually, it’s not the fact that men don’t talk or men are not allowed to be here, confident and forward in saying what their problems are and that they need something else done. It’s actually if a black man talks in that way, then he’s instantly seen as aggressive and kind of on the attack and demanding is seen as all the negative things, whereas if it’s not a black man, then it’s seen as being positive, confident, assertive.

And so, yeah, there can be changed, but I think it still has an undercurrent that needs to be addressed. 

Yeah, [00:59:00] definitely. And I think I did an interview with Aisha Peters for the National Bereaved Parents Day and she sort of highlighted the fact that when she went looking for support after the loss of her daughter, there wasn’t anybody that looked like her in any of the services that were out there.

So unless those things really change fundamentally, you end up with just, like you say, the round table going around, but not necessarily translating that into systematic or systemic change in an organization. So, yeah, I think, you know, you can feel like you’re not oppressed until you try and access something when you realize actually you’re still being oppressed.

Yeah, there’s a way to go then, um, with that. Certainly haven’t got all the answers, but I know that it’s just important that those of us that want to make change kind of become the change we want to see. 

Yeah, I think you summarized that really well. Um, and yeah, I think the other side that the other side to that as well is that you can have everything online and like I was saying, sans is online and it has a presence with some pages which have stuff about black people, [01:00:00] but no one knows it’s there.

Um, and what we need to change and what Ebony Bonds, I think, is trying to change is having those conversations within our communities, um, not being afraid to have those conversations, understanding that you’re not the only person to ever gone through this. Um, and there probably are people in your family have gone through it as well, but they just don’t talk because they’re not communities.

We don’t talk, and just getting people to talk more and I think a lot of people, um, who’ve approached me and so they appreciate what I’m doing. They say that because, um, they feel like that’s what we need. We need more black men or non white men talking about baby loss so that it can help others who may be feeling isolated and alone, get them to actually say, yeah, actually I’ve got a problem or I’ve heard your problem and your solution probably doesn’t fit mine, but let me tell you what my problem is, and maybe you might have an idea of how I can go about changing this. [01:01:00] 

So on that sort of note, what kind of key messages might you want to get out to people who are listening to this? Is there anything that you kind of want to pass on? 

I think every situation is probably different. For me, what has been really helpful and it didn’t come about because I searched for it, it came about because my wife, I felt like I needed to support my wife and she was getting involved in um, SANDS and other things.

Getting involved in what she was getting involved in to support her helped me to then be exposed to more women who have been through this and exposed to their stories so that I could better understand what was going on with my wife and how she needed help. So I think that just turning up and being there to maybe not talk, maybe just listen sometimes just listen to other people who’ve been through this experience and then, yeah, talk as well when, when they give you the opportunity to talk, take it, be vulnerable, it’s fine to be vulnerable.

It’s okay [01:02:00] not to be okay. So people need to be a bit more open and realize that everybody has faults and everybody has problems and everybody needs a little bit of time to vent or to release. To explain and to just let yourself do that. Don’t hold yourself back from doing that. Make sure that you let it out as they say, better out than in. Um, so take that advice. I think. 

Thank you. That’s really helpful. You’ve talked an awful lot today about an incredibly heartbreaking story both for you and for Gina and for Danté. What we always ask parents at this stage is to tell us something that they’re grateful for. We try and keep it light hearted so that people can put the tissues down now and kind of step back into their day a bit more springy. So Pete, what are you grateful for? 

So, without trying to make everyone pick up the tissues again, while, uh, we did have Danté inside, uh, Gina’s belly. I played a type of music to him, or we played a type of music to him, that comes [01:03:00] from a culture that we enjoy a lot. It’s called Soca, and I played a song to him called ‘Bacchanalist’ by Kerwin Du Bois. And it’s a really upbeat song, and we played it for one of his funeral songs. And then when we go out sometimes, we’ll hear it at functions and places that we go.

And soca music is such an uplifting genre of music that even though you’ve attached that to something that’s really sad it still manages to be so positive. And soca music is the only music that I know the only genre of music I know where every song is positive there’s positive messages funny messages in them, and so I’m grateful for that genre of music Soca because it’s uplifting, positive, you listen to it, you get energy and yeah, it’s just fun.

So even through hard times, if you listen to Soca music, you will feel positive and energetic. So I’m grateful for Soca. [01:04:00] 

Well, I’m grateful you’ve told me about it because I will now be Spotifying my way through a playlist and I will put some links on the web listings in relation to this episode as well so that other people can also get a little burst of positivity because I think that’s lovely.

So thank you very much for that. Pete, thank you so much for coming on today and talking about your story and touching on some really important points for us all to kind of go away and have a think about. 

Thank you for inviting me. 

That was my chat with Pete Reeves and I hope you found it as valuable as I did.

Do check out the resources that we’ve mentioned, all listed on our episode or webpage. As always, please comment, rate, or you can email us at hello@bereavedparentsclub.org.uk

This episode is dedicated to Danté.