A heartbreaking speech by a Labour MP moved several members of the House of Commons to tears during a debate on stillbirths, as Vicky Foxcroft described being pregnant at 16 and losing her baby after just five days.
The MP for Lewisham and Deptford said the speech was the hardest she had ever had to give, saying she had felt as a frightened teenager that she was “treated like a kid, not a grieving mum”.
Her baby, Veronica, died after the umbilical cord became wrapped around her neck during labour, starving her of oxygen. She died five days later after Foxcroft and her then partner decided to switch off life support.
“I don’t have children now because I’ve lived with the fear of the same thing happening and I couldn’t do it twice,” Foxcroft said.
She said she had never spoken publicly about her loss before. “The absolute truth is I struggle to talk to my family and my very close friends about it,” Foxcroft said, describing her daughter as “my little angel”.
“I also want to apologise to my many friends who I haven’t told. It’s not because I don’t want you to know or I am embarrassed, it’s just because I find it so very hard to do so.”
Visibly shaking and close to tears, Foxcroft said she was treated like she should be pleased not to be a teenage mother. “As a young woman, going through this, I felt like most people looked at me as if I should be grateful, but I wasn’t and I’m not,” she said.
“I was her mum and I also hoped one day I would be her best friend. If she was alive today, she would be 23 years old. The pain does get easier to deal with, but it never goes away.
“I hope one day nobody else has to go through this. I want my message to be heard by young women, in my constituency and across the country, just to say you are not alone.”
Describing the moment she decided to turn off her daughter’s life support machine, Foxcroft said: “She was never able to cry, to smile, but I loved her and desperately wanted her. I got to hold her then for the first time until her heart eventually stopped ... I never wanted to let her go.”
Sitting down, Foxcroft was comforted by fellow Labour MP Gloria De Piero, who had tears in her eyes.
The Conservative MP Sir Nicholas Soames, who was next to speak, wiped his eyes as he praised Foxcroft.
He said: “I hope that the whole house will read the honourable lady’s speech and will feel that she has done something incredibly brave today and courageous, and to my honourable friends who have proposed this debate, nothing but the greatest respect is due.
“And to my honourable friend who first talked about this with such courage and straightforwardness, all our thoughts are with her and all the other parents who have suffered these terrible losses.”
The debate was brought by the Conservative MPs Antoinette Sandbach and Will Quince, who both also spoke about losing children.
In his speech, Quince praised Foxcroft, saying MPs were “breaking a silence, breaking a taboo, telling parents up and down the country that it is OK to talk about the babies and children we have lost. In the mother of all parliaments, there is no subject we won’t talk about.”
