What I want other childless mothers like me to know: My longed-for baby daughter died at 6 weeks - after 5 miscarriages and £20K on IVF. No one tells you what to expect after such a loss. HELEN RICHARDSON

To any onlooker, it would have seemed like a perfect moment. Home from hospital with my newborn daughter, I sat peacefully with her in the nursery I’d lovingly decorated. Amelie was my rainbow baby after five miscarriages and three cycles of fertility treatment. She was the dream that came true, the child who finally made me a mother. And, on that early summer’s day in May 2025, I knew I would cherish this memory of being with her for ever. But there was another unbearably poignant reason that this moment was so precious. It would never be repeated. After just six weeks of life, Amelie had died after she was born with a serious congenital condition. Her short life had been spent in hospital, undergoing major surgery, hooked up to countless wires and tubes. After her death, my husband Tim and I had been allowed to bring her home briefly, so we could feel like the family we’d always dreamed of being, however fleetingly. This would be Amelie’s only time in our home, a brief visit in a cold cot. But it was so important to us that we had memories of the three of us in this home. I had cried so many tears by this point that I wanted these moments to be peaceful – despite the thud of agony that those walls would never hear the sound of her little footsteps or her peals of laughter. After just six weeks of life, Helen Richardson's newborn daughter Amelie died after she was born with a serious congenital condition Amelie was my rainbow baby after five miscarriages and three cycles of fertility treatment – she was the dream that came true, says Helen Now, a year on, I still struggle to comprehend that Amelie was mine so briefly. I feel angry that after such an arduous and heartbreaking journey to motherhood, my happy ending was so cruelly snatched from me. The narrative that surrounds rainbow babies is that they are the joyous conclusion to the heartache so many women endure when a full-term pregnancy eludes them. Yet, there are others like me, who find themselves navigating life without the child we were finally blessed with. We hear a lot about infertility, miscarriage and stillbirth, but less about when a rainbow baby is born, only to then pass away. I want to be a voice for parents like me, who have been left without the child that we had longed for. Tim, an accountant, and I started trying for a baby in 2020, the year after we married, when we were 32 and 34. Working with children as a senior assistant headteacher, a job I love, I couldn’t wait to have my own family. Between 2020 and 2022, I experienced four miscarriages, each around the seven-week mark, with no identifiable reason why. The hope and excitement when I’d take a positive pregnancy test would be followed by the crushing sadness when I would miscarry. It was incredibly tough. Even though he was as devastated as me, Tim was my rock. My family and friends held me up on the lowest days, too. Supported by the pregnancy and baby care charity Tommy’s, we refused to give up hope. In 2023, we started IVF in the hope that the embryo screening would increase the chance of detecting any chromosomal and genetic problems that may cause miscarriage. Due to my age – I was 38 at the time – I wasn’t eligible to have it on the NHS in Portsmouth, where we live, so we went private, funding the £20,000 treatment with our savings and help from family. The first attempt in June 2023 was successful but once again I miscarried within a couple of weeks. The second embryo transfer in November that year didn’t work, but the following July we did another transfer, which did. I really couldn’t believe it when I was still pregnant at our seven-week scan. As the days went past and I remained pregnant, my hope cautiously grew that, finally, it was our turn. At the 12-week scan, baby Amelie was diagnosed with a condition called exomphalos, where the abdomen wall doesn’t develop fully in the womb The narrative that surrounds rainbow babies is that they are the joyous conclusion to the heartache so many women endure when a full-term pregnancy eludes them, says Helen But that elation turned to shock at the 12-week scan when our baby was diagnosed with a condition called exomphalos, where the abdomen wall doesn’t develop fully in the womb, so the baby’s bowel and some organs are on the outside of the body. It affects around two in every 5,000 babies born in the UK. I vividly remember the sonographer falling silent as she ran the doppler over my abdomen. My heart sank; whatever she’d seen, I knew it wasn’t good. When we met with a doctor, Tim and I sat in stunned disbelief. How, after all we’d been through to reach this point, could this be happening? It felt so deeply unfair, and I was so worried about what this meant for our baby’s health. Doctors explained that although it’s a serious condition, and our daughter would require surgery shortly after birth, her prognosis was good. We clung to that, refusing to contemplate any other outcome. Meanwhile, I resolved not to allow the diagnosis to overshadow the joy I felt seeing my bump grow and feeling my baby kick. We readied everything for her arrival – her nursery, little outfits, a crib. And as I entered the last weeks of my pregnancy, I simply couldn’t wait to meet the baby I’d longed for for so long. In March 2025, Amelie was delivered by planned C-section at 37 weeks, weighing 7lb 9oz. I was able to hold her briefly before she was taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and just those seconds of feeling her in my arms, gazing at her, were magical. Tim and I were both so emotional; our joy was muddled with fear and worry about what lay ahead for her. Amelie remained in hospital and at two weeks had major surgery to place her bowel and organs back inside her body. It was terrifying thinking of her tiny body on an operating table for six long hours; we knew there was no guarantee she’d survive the complex operation. Our relief when she did was enormous, but doctors warned she would need further surgery as they had been unable to fully place her organs back in her abdomen. Still, we did not give up hope. We spent hours every day by Amelie’s incubator, willing her on. But in the days and weeks that followed, Amelie battled infections, and her kidneys began to fail. Every day would bring bad news or a glimmer of hope that was invariably dashed. In early May last year, the doctors gently explained there was nothing more they could do for her. We had to let her go. Tim and I held each other, united in utter disbelief that it had come to this. That we had to say goodbye after just six weeks together was incomprehensible. Amelie’s entire life, and ours as a family, had been spent in a hospital. In March 2025, Amelie was delivered by planned C-section at 37 weeks, weighing 7lb 9oz – then in early May, the doctors gently explained there was nothing more they could do Our families were able to spend time with Amelie in a private room, holding her and loving her, before all the machines she was hooked up to were taken away. Just Tim and I were with her in her final moments. I sang Songbird by Eva Cassidy, which I’d sung to her during my pregnancy. And the songbirds keep singing like they know the score And I love you, I love you, I love you At one point she opened her eyes to gaze at us, and I felt it was her sign to us that she was ready to go. Soon after that, she slipped away, a final breath, then the only sound in the room was Tim and I crying as we cradled her. The importance of our time with Amelie after her death can’t be overstated. Keeping her in a cool cot, we spent the next few days at a children’s hospice called Naomi House where we cuddled Amelie, took photos and made castings of her hands and feet. We were also able to bring her home for a few hours before her funeral. People who haven’t experienced the loss of a child may struggle to understand how it can bring some peace amid the emotional turmoil, but for us it did. Especially because all her life had been lived in the hospital; we needed to have her in a normal environment, just the three of us, to form memories of her in the home where she should have grown up. A year on, we have had counselling, and I have recently returned to work. I am also building a social media community for families affected by the major form of exomphalos – which is where, as in Amelie’s case, the gap in the abdominal wall is more than 4cm – so we can support one another. Amelie’s nursery is just as it was on the day I went to hospital to give birth: all the little babygros that were never worn are folded neatly in drawers, the crib is empty, the blankets she wasn’t swaddled in remain pristine. I do find it hard to go in there, but I also take comfort in the memories of her being there. My rainbow baby was not my happy ending I desperately hoped for; I am now a mother without a child. Despite everything – the miscarriages, the failed fertility treatments, and Amelie’s death – I would like to try for another baby. To give our little miracle a sibling. I can understand why some women would simply stop now, too afraid of further pain and disappointment, or explore other paths to motherhood. But I still feel that desire within me. It is this hope that fuels me.