About Baby Loss Awareness Week

Baby Loss Awareness Week is an opportunity:

• To support bereaved parents and families and to unite with others across the world to commemorate their babies’ lives and lost pregnancies.

• To raise awareness about pregnancy and baby loss.

• To drive improvements in care and support for anyone affected and in the prevention of pregnancy and baby loss.

The Baby Loss Awareness Week Alliance are committed to raising awareness of pregnancy and baby loss, providing support to anyone affected by pregnancy loss and the death of a baby, working with health professionals and services to improve bereavement care, and reducing preventable deaths.

Baby Loss Awareness Week

This year marks the 21st year of Baby Loss Awareness Week in the UK – a week for everyone in the baby loss community and beyond to come together to remember and commemorate our much-loved and missed babies. 

The week also provides an opportunity to raise awareness of the impact of pregnancy and baby loss; the importance that bereavement support plays in the ongoing bereavement journey; and of the vital work that is needed to improve pregnancy outcomes and to save babies’ lives. 

Throughout Baby Loss Awareness Week 2023 we want to create a space for you to share and feel supported, whatever your experience of loss may be, about how you’ve coped, what helped (and what didn’t) so we can all learn how to better look after each other as a community and know how to get the right kind of support when we need it.

Parents and families tell us how important it is that they each find a way to remember their baby in a way that suits them. Some join with others at special services organised by their local hospital or a local support organisation, some find solace in events organised by their faith community while others will remember alone in a way unique to them.

It is important to remember there is no right or wrong way and it can change as the years pass too.

During last year’s #WaveOfLight messages of remembrance and hope brought many people together. Take care of yourselves and know that we are here for you now and throughout the year. You are not alone.

Want to share your story? Find out more here. 

A brief history of Baby Loss Awareness Week

October 15 2002 was the inaugural Baby Loss Awareness Day in the UK and was initiated by a group of parents inspired by Pregnancy & Infant Loss Remembrance Day in the United States. Through the sale of handmade blue and pink ribbon pins they raised several thousand pounds for UK organisations supporting bereaved parents.

The 2003 campaign saw the day expanded to a week with events across the UK. The very first official ‘Wave of Light’ service in the UK was held at the American Church in London and was attended by representatives and members of each participating organisation. There were also services held across the UK from Scotland to Surrey. Once again, the ribbon pins were made and sold by bereaved parents.

The 2004 campaign was a more formal collaboration between the five organisations involved which included Sands, the Miscarriage Association, the Ectopic Pregnancy Trust, ARC and Babyloss.com. The ribbon pins were commercially manufactured and balloon releases were held in several locations. The group organised a secular service at the Royal Statistical Society in London and there were over twenty other events around the UK.

In 2006 the distinctive two colour ribbon was introduced and the ribbon pins were once again made by bereaved parents with the help of their family and friends.

Since 2010 Sands, the UK’s leading pregnancy and baby loss charity, has played a pivotal role within the organisation of the week and since 2014 has taken a lead role to promote the week as part of its work raising awareness of the issues surrounding pregnancy and baby loss in the UK.

We don’t just work on bereavement.  Many charities involved in Baby Loss Awareness Week work every day to prevent baby and infant deaths, pregnancy loss and maternal deaths. But this Baby Loss Awareness Week we want to talk about what could be done right now to better support families affected by the death of a baby.