A baby memorial area has been opened in Margate by a small East Kent charity dedicated to those who have suffered baby loss.
The East Kent Baby Memorial Group, founded in 2020, has opened the area in Dell Gardens at Northdown Park as a permanent memorial to all the babies who have died at any time, and in any circumstances, including stillbirths, miscarriages or other reasons.
The memorial allows families to create simple terracotta tiles with their baby’s name and a significant date at a one-off cost of £40.
This is the fourth local memorial created by the charity and joins other gardens Ashford, Faversham, Canterbury and Sittingbourne, with plans for further similar local memorials across Kent.
Charity volunteer Chris Twydell said: “Baby loss remains a hard to talk about subject, but the reality is that around one in four pregnancies ends in a miscarriage, with babies also lost through stillbirth and neonatal death.
“Many families do not have anywhere special to remember their babies and that is where we can help. Until fairly recently, families were often told to ‘forget and move on’ after a baby loss, but now we realise how important it is to acknowledge a baby’s
existences, and to have somewhere special to remember them.
“One mum told us she had waited 45 years for somewhere to remember her special baby.
“The charity has 434 name tiles in its Ashford Baby Memorial Garden and another 100 across its four smaller sites, each tile remembering a very special baby.”
The charity has name tiles at its other gardens remembering babies from the 1940s to the present day.
Name tiles will be permanently mounted on boards. They are usually ordered on 15th February, May, August and November each year and are generally in place within about three weeks.
Find out more, or order your name tile, at: https://www.eastkentbabymemorialgardens.org.uk/
RIP