STILLBIRTH HEARTBREAK 'SHARING OUR STORY HELPED US GRIEVE'

After losing their baby at full term, the Christchurch couple is keeping Grayson's memory alive

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Parents Kylie and Ben Collins were snuggled up at home watching the 2021 Olympics when their unborn son began kicking and flipping inside Kylie's rounded belly.

Excited for the arrival of their fifth child, whose sex was a surprise, the Christchurch couple joked their energetic bub was a future Olympian.

But just a day later, following a routine midwife appointment, the terrified mum, who was 42 weeks pregnant, was rushed to hospital by ambulance.

Devastatingly, their precious son's heart had stopped.

“I went to my midwife appointment at Rangiora Hospital for a stretch and sweep to help bring on the labour while Ben was at work, and everything was fine,” recalls Kylie, who is mum to Maia, 17, Kaiden, 15, Azalea, 12, Arlo, seven, and twin girls Esmae and Lucia, two.

“Then just before I went to leave, the midwife said she'd check the heartbeat and couldn't find it. I was taken into another room to try again and when she still couldn't get it, she said, 'I think you need to call Ben.'”

Sadly, it wasn’t the first time Kylie, 36, had been to hospital to give birth and returned home without a baby.

During her third pregnancy in 2011, less than a year after they married, a 17-week scan showed the foetus, a boy, had stopped growing at 14 weeks. When Kylie had to give birth in hospital, it was discovered the umbilical cord had wrapped around his leg in a knot and prevented feeding.

Ten years later, on 4 August 2021, as Kylie phoned her husband from hospital, she apologised repeatedly down the line. The midwife took over the call and told Ben they couldn’t find a heartbeat. Instantly, the self-employed tiler, 35, assured his devastated wife it wasn’t her fault.

“Ben said there wasn’t a single second he blamed me,” shares Kylie, whose partner of 19 years raced to be with her, before picking up his dad, plus the couple’s children from school and kindergarten.