Myleene Klass says children should talk about miscarriage as she addresses backlash
**Trigger warning: The following article contains discussion of miscarriage and baby loss**
Myleene Klass says her campaign work isn’t over yet after changing the law following years of calling for greater support for those who have miscarriages.
Four years of campaigning resulted in the government pledging in July this year to implement greater support for women whose pregnancies end in miscarriage.
The I’m a Celeb winner, 45, and MP Olivia Blake backed changes to the Women’s Health Strategy in Parliament.
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"A lot of people did say, 'You don't have to do it, you've got your rainbow baby now you could move on from it' and I really could have but once you've had a look into it and once you open pandora's box, you see what is in there and see how much needs to be done. And you can't look away," she tells Tyla about changing the law.
Under the updated rules and guidelines, women will no longer have to wait until they have three consecutive miscarriages (known as recurrent miscarriage) to receive medical care and support. There will now be medical intervention after each miscarriage.
The Department of Health and Social Care also announced a bunch of new measures to ‘boost the health and wellbeing of women and girls’, including a pilot scheme to ensure women have medical intervention after each miscarriage.
A&E facilities will have to make sure that cold storage facilities are available to receive and store remains or pregnancy tissue 24/7 so women don’t have to store them in their fridge.
Women who suffer a miscarriage can request a certificate as an official recognition of their loss plus better collection and storage of remains. The certificate will be available to anyone who loses a baby pre-24 weeks’ gestation.
Myleen tells Tyla she couldn’t look away from the ‘archaic’ rules before the change even after having her rainbow baby, her son Apollo, four.
“Nobody wants to talk about dead babies. Who would want to talk about dead babies? When you lose your baby, it's not like the movies where you wake up bleeding and know something's wrong, and everyone cries and it's over.
"It happens in the food hall as you’re shopping. It happened to me when I was live on air. It happened to me at work. It happens when you're on the school run and it happens walking in the park.
Myleene previously spoke about enduring a miscarriage while presenting her radio show but forced herself to finish.
Myleene said she realised she’d lost her child while in the toilet during a break. She called friend and fellow presenter Lauren Laverne to support her through the rest of the broadcast.
“There's no good time to have a miscarriage. But there's certainly even worse times. One of my miscarriages happened when we were having a family dinner party and I went to the loo, there are babies being flushed down loos, because nobody knows what to do.”
Myleene’s children have seen her and Olivia Blake bring about change and the conversations around miscarriage are continuing to happen in their classrooms.
“They’ve seen it all. They’ve sent the doors slammed in my face, they’ve seen the David and Goliath scenario played out. Who knows that that sparks in a young mind, my girls took part in the documentary [Miscarriage & Me] and many chastised me, saying ‘Why are you bringing this subject up around children?’ And that’s the issue. But what about your child that’s expecting a brother and a sister? Or why are you not addressing the family unit? Or not looking at the PSHE curriculum? But what about when your body suffers these challenges? My daughters are bringing these lessons into their classrooms.
And that's where the change happens. My daughters are talking about it in their PSHE lessons."
The singer and presenter had her first miscarriage in Dubai where she found out her baby had passed away during a scan.
“The screens are even bigger, because everything's bigger in Dubai. It was utterly heartbreaking," she says. "My friend and I just stared at the screen in shock because every time they put the jelly on [me] and put the camera [on] my stomach, every time they moved the camera around, my baby would just fall back down and nothing can prepare you psychologically for that.
"I don't have a scan of that baby. But I have that image that haunts me, that drives me on.”
The 9th-15th October marks Baby Loss Awareness Week. For help, support and advice, you can contact charity Tommy's here.
Topics: Celebrity, Health, Mental Health, Parenting, Myleene Klass
Gregory Robinson