An Oxford politician will feature in a BBC film about the baby loss charity Tommy’s, sharing her own tragic experience of losing a child.

A local politician will feature in a BBC film promoting the baby loss charity Tommy’s, sharing her own tragic experience of losing a child.

Katherine Miles, who is the Lib Dem city council candidate for Carfax and Jericho, will appear alongside adventurer and broadcaster Ben Fogle and his wife Marina. They suffered first a miscarriage and then lost their son Willem to stillbirth.

After a smooth pregnancy with her eight-year-old daughter Anika, Mrs Miles suffered three miscarriages and a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, when the embryo implants outside the womb, all within two years.

She then sought help from Tommy’s, which is the UK’s biggest charity funding research into why pregnancy goes wrong and how it can be prevented, and joined a trial at their National Centre for Miscarriage Research.

Mrs Miles, who works as a gender and sustainability advisor, participated in Tommy’s SIMPLANT trial where a diabetes drug was used to boost stem cells in the womb lining and help it hold on to a pregnancy.

After months of taking the drug and travelling regularly from her Bullingdon Road home to the clinic in Coventry she fell pregnant with her daughter Sietske, now two.

Mrs Miles said: “I found the process of participating in the trial very healing. I spent a lot of time driving back and forth to Coventry from our home in Oxford and this time was peaceful and restorative. It gave me time to come to terms with what had happened to me.

“I felt incredibly anxious during the pregnancy but enrolled on a local antenatal mindfulness course which was incredibly helpful.

“On the morning of the first day of May people fill up the streets to hear the boys’ choir sing at dawn from the tower at Magdalen College. On that day in 2018 my family and I had planned to join in with the celebrations – but I was already in labour.

“We opened the roof in our loft, and amazingly the beautiful music reached our house on the wind. For a moment, I was relieved of my labour pains.

“Our beautiful second daughter arrived later that day. We named her Sietske which means victory.

“Holding her in my arms felt almost surreal as we reflected on the four years of pregnancies that ended with empty arms. It was a real victory for us after all we had been through. After all that pain, I couldn’t believe our new reality.

“I attribute the safe arrival of my baby daughter to Tommy’s medical research on recurrent miscarriage and I will forever be grateful.”

Professor Alexander Heazell, who leads the Tommy’s team in Manchester and appears in the film, said for many years baby loss was simply regarded as “one of those things” so research has had to catch up with other areas of medicine.

“In a way the taboo is similar to that surrounding cancer 50 years ago,” he said. “Without discussion of signs or symptoms, people didn’t come forward early enough to save lives. Lifting that taboo is critical.”

According to Tommy’s, one in four pregnancies currently ends in miscarriage, stillbirth or premature birth.

Mrs Fogle, who has completed a half-marathon to raise funds for the charity, opens up in the film about her own experience.

She said: “I was 33 weeks’ pregnant when I suddenly fell ill. At the hospital, I started bleeding heavily so I was rushed in for an emergency caesarean. Our son Willem was stillborn. Initially I was in shock and very ill. I met our son, I held him but I was feeling very numb.

“It was three or four days later that the tears came. It was incredibly sad, the realization that the baby we’d prepared for was never coming home. It comforts me to know that, thanks to Tommy’s, other families will not have to experience the heartbreak we did.”

The film will be shown on BBC1 on Saturday at 1.15pm and repeated on BBC2 on Tuesday March 2 at 3.10pm.

To donate to the BBC Lifeline appeal on behalf of Tommy’s, go to bbc.co.uk/lifeline.