Hayley Metcalfe, 37, from Runcorn in Cheshire, is sharing her story in the hope of comforting others who have experienced similar grief. She and her husband Mike had their first son George in 2019, and were delighted when they learned she was expecting another boy in 2023. However, at 19 weeks and four days into the pregnancy, Hayley sensed something was wrong, and an ultrasound revealed the baby, named Oscar, had died. She was induced into labour the next day and spent nine hours in labour, knowing she would never hear her baby cry.
Following a post-mortem, doctors discovered she had experienced a silent, concealed placental abruption, in which the placenta separates from the womb wall. The following year, the couple faced further heartbreak when Hayley became pregnant again in summer 2024. At 17 weeks, she was told she had lost the pregnancy, and the baby — named Leo — had also died as a result of a placental abruption. ‘History repeated itself,’ she said.
After three years of loss, Hayley began searching for answers and found Tommy’s Rainbow Clinic in Manchester, which offers specialist care to women and families in pregnancies that follow a stillbirth or neonatal death. When she became pregnant again in 2025, she was told there was a problem with blood flow from her placenta to the baby. From six weeks, she began taking daily blood-thinning injections and aspirin.
Throughout the pregnancy, she said she was terrified, expecting every day that the baby might die. The further along she got, the more she felt there was to lose. In February, the couple welcomed their daughter. ‘Hope let out her first cry and I burst into tears,’ she recalled. Naming their ‘miracle daughter’ Hope felt right after everything they had been through.
Hayley said she wants others facing the ‘impossible’ task of trusting again after baby loss to know that hope can still exist. ‘We will always carry the grief of losing Oscar and Leo with us, but Hope is living proof that even after the darkest of storms, rainbows can break through.’