GRIEVING parents gathered in Glasgow yesterday for the city's first Saying Goodbye service, for mothers and fathers to mark the loss of a baby at any stage of pregnancy, birth or infancy.
Families who have suffered the pain of losing a baby were invited to attend the ceremony at Glasgow Cathedral to pay tribute to their lost children. Organised by the Mariposa Trust, Saying Goodbye services are new national commemorative services which will take place in cathedrals across the UK.
A ceremony will also be held in St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Edinburgh at 3.30pm today.
Among the grieving parents in Glasgow were Lesley, 37, and Gordon Buchanan, 35, from Clarkston, East Renfrewshire.
The couple attended the service to pay tribute to the three babies they lost through miscarriage between 2009 and January 2013.
Lesley, who is a volunteer fundraiser for Saying Goodbye, said she was at the service to acknowledge her babies alongside others who knew what she was going through.
She said: "I think, because people think you haven't physically lost anything - I hadn't had that child - they think you should just get over it. But the second you find out you're pregnant, you're having a baby. I started talking to my baby in my head, so I was having a baby regardless. I think people think it was only a foetus that she's lost, but to me it was my baby that I have lost and it's amazing to find people who feel the same way."
The Saying Goodbye services were established by Staffordshire couple Zoe and Andy Clark-Coates, both 37, who have lost five children through miscarriage.
During the hour-long service in Glasgow, around 100 people sang hymns, listened to songs and poetry readings, and prayed together.
A set of traditional handbells were passed down the aisles and anyone who wished to ring the bell could do so to represent the baby they had lost.
The services are free to attend and are open to anyone of any faith or no faith.
Approximately one in four pregnancies, or 250,000 per year, end in miscarriage, Zoe explained, plus 4000 through stillbirth and more in infancy in the UK alone.
She said: "What is so special about Saying Goodbye services is that they are for every stage of loss.
"Whether someone has lost very early on, whether they have lost at birth, or whether they have lost in early years, the service is for everybody and caters for everybody.
"It is told to them that their baby mattered and that is very important when you lose a child because it is such an isolating thing and such a taboo subject that people often go within themselves - it is hard to then talk about with people because of their responses often.
"I think the services bring people together who have all been through that same experience and that is a really powerful thing to do.
"We welcome anybody, no matter how long ago their loss was, whether someone lost yesterday or 80 years ago."
Last year, in its first year, the charity organised seven Saying Goodbye services across the UK including York Minster and St Paul's Cathedral.
This year, a total of 20 services will take place, including the Glasgow and Edinburgh services in Scotland, with more planned for 2014.
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