SANDS is a self-help support group comprised of parents who have experienced the death of a baby through miscarriage, stillbirth, or shortly after birth.

SANDS provides immediate and ongoing support to bereaved parents, families and friends. Sharing with others who have had similar experiences can assist parents to work through the often intense grief which follows the death of a baby.

In Victoria in 2004, 610 babies were stillborn and 207 died within the first month of life. One out of every 78 babies with a birthweight equal to or greater than 400 grams, or 20 weeks or more gestation, was either stillborn and died within the first 28 days of life. These statistics are from the Annual Report of the Consultative Council on Obstetric and Paediatric Mortality and Morbidity.

A full copy of the report is available on the website www.health.vic.gov.au/perinatal

Many parents who experience pregnancy or newborn loss find that there is little understanding of their need to grieve. Although attitudes are changing, these deaths are often treated as unfortunate occurrences, best quickly forgotten, rather than the tragedy it often is for many families.

The lack of recognition of the baby as a real person, whose death it is legitimate to mourn, may isolate parents who are bewildered by the intensity of their grief. Such isolation may prolong their grieving.

The impact of any bereavement - each type with its won particular difficulties - is frequently misunderstood. For parents bereaved by the death of a baby during pregnancy or shortly after, few will understand the depth and extent of their loss.

Many parents, from very early on in the pregnancy (for some this occurs even before the pregnancy) plan their lives around the new baby. Clothes and furniture may have been bought, a room freshly painted, plans made for including the baby in their lives, kindergarten and schools chosen. Others are often unaware of the parents' hopes and plans for their baby. When a baby dies, parents mourn the loss of their hopes and dreams, the loss of the future.

Many parents, especially in the case of miscarriage, have few or no memories to assist in establishing the reality of their dead baby. The lack of memories of a real baby can make adjustment to the loss more difficult. Special memories can provide some consolation in the months and years ahead.

This is why SANDS encourages parents to take photos, footprints, locks of hair, to name their baby, create a journal, make a toy or clothing, purchase a special item in memory of their baby or to create memories in other ways.

Contact with other parents enables those with recent experiences to learn that the intensity and longevity of their grief is normal. Parents may also be reassured to see that eventually they will adjust to their baby's death and that many experience personal change, often for the better, after the death of their baby. This facilitation of natural grief reduces the possibility of long-term problems developing, which can arise when the expression of grief is denied.

SANDS aims to:

• facilitate the normal grief process for the newly bereaved and for parents whose natural grief was denied appropriate expression at the time of their baby's death - direct support

• change the community attitude and associated practices that fail to recognise the death of a baby as a real loss, legitimate to mourn - indirect support, and

• encourage research into the incidence, cause, effects on the family and methods of preventing and alleviating associated problems.

For contact details of all SANDS groups in Australia - go to SANDS throughout Australia.