Volunteering for Remember My Baby
Baby Loss Awareness Week is drawing to close, but for too many parents out there, the loss of their baby will never be out of their minds. It is up to everyone to make sure they know they are their babies have not been forgotten.
As a photographer and Mum of two healthy children, I feel extremely fortunate to not have experienced the trauma of stillbirth - but found myself wanting to use my talent for a good cause and that is how I came to volunteer for the charity Remember My Baby.
Remember My Baby is a UK based charity that sends professional photographers into hospitals to photograph babies who have been stillborn or who will never leave hospital.
When I talk about Remember My Baby, many of the responses are usually ‘I could never do it, I’d be too emotional’ (do they think I find it to be a barrel of laughs?) or “You are very brave”. I do appreciate this is a compliment, but in all honesty I am not the brave one, I am doing a job that I hope will make someone’s life slightly less helish than it already is.
The brave ones are the parents that say goodbye to their children and then have to learn to live a life that doesn’t include the baby they loved so.
Remember my Baby primarily works with families who lose babies over the 24 week mark. The hospital or family call RMB and they then find and send a photographer out to meet the family and take photographs of the precious moments they get to spend with their son or daughter.
All the photographers working with Remember My Baby are volunteers, we all have lives, families, and jobs to fit around the photoshoots we do. The sessions can come up with very short notice and there not always a photographer available. For this reason, Remember My Baby are always looking for new photographers to help lessen the load on individuals and also make sure as many families can benefit as possible,
How Can You Support Remember My Baby?
Volunteer
Are you a UK photographer that could consider volunteering for RMB? Obviously it is emotional work, but it is so necessary. For a family who loses their baby, they will never have a chance at cuddles, or lovely professional photos - but this is still their baby, their child and they deserve to have decent photos. That is something you could help give them. Conversely if you have experience with editing, the digital retouching team are always looking for volunteers as well.
Spread the Word.
Not all bereavement midwives know we exist or remember to call us at the vital time, if people don’t know RMB are here - they miss out on this service. Please talk about Remember My Baby and tell others about what we do. As well as sending photographers to the family, they also offer a retouching service. In that situation, they invite the family to send a couple of their photographs in and we can help
Financial Support
Just £10 would help go towards paying for the USB stick that holds these precious photos and pay the postage and packaging to send it to the family. We live in an age of financial demands and you have to pick the ones that mean the most to you, but if you can - I’d really encourage you to go over to http://www.remembermybaby.org.uk/ and read more about their work.
Thankyou.