Few people, unless they have experienced it themselves, can imagine the intense grief and pain a parent feels at the loss of a baby or other child. Oxford Sands - a support group for people in just that terrible situation - has now launched two new schemes to help parents try to come to terms with the loss. KAREN ROSINE reports...

In an ideal world children, especially babies, would never die. Mums, dads, brothers and sisters would not have to endure the agony of having someone so young taken away from them.

Jan and Dave Bartlett, of Lansdowne Road, Dry Sandford, near Abingdon, know only too well the heartache losing a child leaves behind.

Their son Daniel died in April 1989 when he was just four hours old. Then in January their one-year-old daughter Sarah Jane died from Meningitis. But the couple have refused to give up. Instead they have chosen to channel their grief into helping others in the same situation.

They set up Oxford Sands - a branch of the national Sands charity (Still Birth and Neo-natal Death Society), eight years ago, just after Daniel's death.

The branch has now, together with the Child Bereavement Trust, launched a memories folder and caring booklet for parents to keep as a permanent tribute to their lost children.

The ten-page memory folder is beautifully decorated and designed to hold important keepsakes.

There is space for a photograph or scan picture of the baby, a footprint, a lock of hair, a poem, baby ribbon, ID tag or whatever the parents want.

Jan said: "Each memory is an important record when a baby dies - it is all the parents have to last a lifetime. "They can put their own memories in and whenever they need to, can get the folder out and look at it."

Jan explained that when Sarah Jane died they filled a big wooden "memory chest" with mementoes and trinkets to keep her memory alive.

The chest takes pride of place in the front room and is available for all the family - including their son Charlie, eight, to look through whenever they want to.

But Jan said the chest was too big and too full to show everyone and so the idea of the memory book was dreamt up. The couple have memory folders for both children - Daniel's is particularly poignant - he was so young there are few mementoes to pay tribute to his life. Both the folder and booklet give parents an active way to express their grief and can, importantly, be given to grieving mums as something to carry when they leave hospital.

Jan said: "When Daniel died a really good sister said: 'Give Jan her flowers to carry out. Don't let her walk out empty handed'. "Because, unless you are visiting the maternity ward, you are walking out with a baby. I had two car loads of flowers and I carried some of these out and it did help."

The booklet, Caring for you when your baby dies, has been written by Caroline Jay whose first daughter Laura was stillborn.

It contains advice for parents and carers on how to cope after the death of a baby. This includes the legal requirements as well as emotional support for coping with difficult areas like post mortems.

Jan and Dave found there was little support for what they were going through when Daniel died.

Jan had had an emergency Caesarean at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford. But Daniel survived only a few hours. After the surgery she was placed on a ward between two others housing new-born babies.

Jan said: "I was lying there for a week listening to other people's babies crying even though mine had died. It was awful.

"Then when I got out of hospital I found out there were other people in this road who had lost babies and there were lots and lots of issues that needed to be addressed."

And so Oxford Sands was born and Jan and Dave soon found themselves inundated by calls from families needing their help.

The charity offers advice and support to parents and puts them in touch with others in a similar situation so they can help each other.

Jan said: "There were fathers contacting us who had never ever had a chance to discuss things with anyone. "It is incredibly difficult for both parents but fathers often feel they have to be protective to their wives and quite often have had to register a birth or death in the same day.

"It is also very difficult for other children to cope with it. They know mum is going to have a baby and they see her tummy getting bigger.

"Then the bubble is burst. Mum and dad come back totally different people, and people who use to talk to mum in the street cross over to avoid her." The charity also discovered there were parents who had lost their babies 30 or 40 years ago and did not even know if it was a boy or a girl. Back then the system often "disposed" of babies without parents being given the chance to say goodbye. Nor were they told where their children were buried.

Shocked and saddened by this, the Bartlett's set up a bureau to find lost graves and have reunited many families with their loved ones. Over the years, the charity has liaised with the John Radcliffe Hospital and has funded two new areas - the Bereavement Suite and the Ashfield Suite, where parents can be alone with a baby who is dying or to say goodbye to their dead child.

If a baby dies the parents are offered a blessing or christening and are given a lock of the babies hair and a hand and footprint.

Parents are also offered a role of film taken of the baby. If these are not wanted straight away they are kept on a file at the hospital and can be accessible at any time.

Jan's mother makes tiny baby clothes so babies who die as young as 23 to 24 weeks can be dressed and shown to the parents - for them to say goodbye. Every parent is also given a booklet about Sands with a contact phone number. The charity has set up two memorials at Headington Cemetery and Wolvercote Cemetery. It also holds an annual service of remembrance at St Giles' Church, Oxford. Jan and Dave said the pain of losing their children was indescribable.

After the deaths everything was a constant reminder - shows on television, adverts and everyday sights and smells.

Shopping in supermarkets, which are usually teeming with children, became a torturous nightmare.

Jan said: "Little things just come up and hit you. Like the other day I found Sarah Jane's hair ribbon in my bag and I just caught my breath.

"Every time we walk past a school and see all the children coming out it pulls at our hearts.

"If we can carry on helping other people with their tragedies then Daniel and Sarah Jane did not die for nothing."

*For more information on the folder or booklet call the Child Bereavement Trust on 01628 488101.

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