Alexandra parents Lena and Sam Peterson count their blessings every day that they have four healthy children - but they have also lost four babies along the way.

Baby Loss Awareness Week (October 9-15) provides an opportunity for parents, families and whānau to come together and remember the lives of their babies who have died. 

During last week more than 40 landmarks around the country were lit up in pink, purple and blue, including the Alexandra clock and the Cromwell entrance sign, to honour these “angel babies”.

Lena met Sam about a year after high school and they married in 2007. That same year she suffered a miscarriage at 12 weeks.

Later that year she became pregnant with twin girls, but at 19 weeks was sent to Dunedin in labour - just her and Sam in the car wondering what on earth had gone wrong.

They had to stop several times along the way because the pain was so bad, and strangers pulled over and asked her if she was okay. There was Lena on the side of the road in a ditch, in her pyjamas. 

She gave birth to Jay first at 5:30pm that night - who was still born, followed by Salena who survived for a few minutes - Lena got to hold her before she too died.

Then she was rushed into surgery, with Sam left wondering if he was going to lose his wife as well as his two daughters.

They were given a separate room to recover, still in the maternity ward, and listening to other women in labour was far from ideal for a couple who had just lost their twin daughters.

Then it was time to pack up the girls and take them back home to Alexandra, where they held a private funeral and buried them in the Clyde Cemetery.

Memories of their twin girls - butterfly wings on Lena’s back with their names inside. Photo: The Central App

The response from some people in the community was surprising. Lena said she felt alone and isolated, “because nobody knew how to react so I guess they didn’t”.

Lena went back to work a week later and said talking to her clients in the salon chair each day was her therapy.

A year later Aria was born - five days earlier than the twin girls in 2008, after an extremely emotional pregnancy, where Lena worried about every little thing going wrong.

Lena became pregnant with twins for the second time and gave birth to them at Easter 2010: Two boys Luka and Noah, who were also early at 35 weeks, but after three weeks in NICU they were healthy and ready to go home.

A year later Lena fell pregnant again with another girl, but at 31 weeks they couldn’t find a heartbeat so it was back to Dunedin Hospital.

She had an emergency caesarean on November 18 - but she too was stillborn. Lena didn’t ask for an autopsy to find out what went wrong. It was too much to handle.

“You are still grieving the fact you are missing their birthdays and milestones,” she said.

Lena found a woman in the North Island (KJ Designs) who makes free birthday cards every year for all the registered ‘angel babies‘ around New Zealand. She too had lost a son, Koby, and Lena makes sure he is remembered each year.

“Nobody else remembers but it’s a very significant thing.”

Lena lost her third daughter Mila who was stillborn at 31 weeks. Photo: The Central App

After losing Mila, Lena went into a deep depression, “but I had no time to grieve because I had such a huge role with 18-month-old twins and a three-year-old, so where is the time to do that?”

Lena finally received counselling, and she was grateful for her midwife, Vicky McMillan, who stayed with her the entire week she was waiting to give birth to her third still born daughter.

In 2015, Lena and Sam had another surprise pregnancy, and she gave birth to a healthy boy - Harlan - on September 3.

“My heart was just so broken he really did fill it,” she said.

Every year the family visits the Clyde cemetery to see all of the girls on their birthdays, and Lena makes a cake to mark the occasion. She knows time will heal, and said now is the perfect time to share her story.

She hopes one day there will be a special area in the maternity hospital away from other mothers, where families can grieve their angel babies.  

Support and information about Baby Loss Awareness Week here

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