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A woman who was told to bring her miscarried baby to hospital in a takeaway box is fighting for better treatment of bereaved mums. Laura Corcoran, 33 from Bassetlaw, Notts, designed a device to help grieving women find dignity in the ending of their pregnancies after losing several of her own in the first trimester.

Her Miscarriage Collection Cradle hooks on to a toilet seat and collects the remains so women who’ve had recurrent losses can bring back the cells to hospital for further investigation.

Engineer Laura came up with the idea after her third miscarriage in February 2024, when she was told at her scan there was no heartbeat. “I sat there in the scan room, numb and in shock. It was like I was frozen, while at the same time, hot tears streamed down my face,” she says.

After opting for medical management of her miscarriage, Laura was told there was no room at the hospital and to come back in a fortnight. “I had to carry my dead baby around for two weeks, knowing that as I was walking around, my baby was decomposing inside of me," she says.

“I was trying to keep them safe, but they were already gone. I felt like I had become a mortuary, carrying this precious life inside me that was no longer living. The pain of that realisation was unbearable. I remember asking them, ‘How do I collect my baby?’ The thought of flushing them down the toilet was indescribable.

“The feeling was beyond horrific - it made me feel sick with grief. Their response still haunts me: ‘Try and catch them and bring them in.’”

Laura was forced to use a kitchen sieve and keep her baby in a plastic takeout box in the fridge over the weekend as her local Early Pregnancy Unit was closed until Monday. “Every time I opened the fridge over the weekend, I saw them. My heart broke a little more each time," Laura adds.

After designing her cradle device, Laura tested it out herself in DIY shops near home, before commissioning it from a manufacturing firm in Derbyshire. The kit is now available from 13 NHS Trusts, and Laura's MP Jo White, the Labour representative for Bassetlaw, is backing her calls for wider rollout across the NHS.

Ahead of a backbench business debate on baby loss next Monday (Oct 13), and hot on the heels of her early day motion in June - which called on the government to implement recommendations from the 2023 Pregnancy Loss Review - Ms White said: “There was no dignity in this process - not for Laura, and not for her baby. She was keen to tell me of the incredible kindness and compassion shown by the nurses, doctors, sonographers and support staff.

“But I was shocked to learn that the NHS does not provide a receptacle and container to collect the baby’s remains for women who are expected to miscarry at home, and I was angry that many women have to resort to using makeshift materials.”

Among the recommendations from the 2023 review was the provision of baby loss kits to families at home or in clinical settings. An average of 500 women each day will have a miscarriage, with the vast majority of losses - 80 percent - happening in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

Happily, Laura and her husband Ronan, 32, welcomed their daughter Cora, now three, although her birth was followed by three more tragic miscarriages, in which Laura used her own collection device.

“People are given a test tube to collect a sample of urine, but when I was told to collect my baby, I was given nothing. Nothing to catch them in. No guidance. No dignity in the process,” she adds.

“I was angry. It shouldn’t have been this way. No one should have to go through what I went through, with next to no support.”

READ MORE: 'I had a perfectly healthy pregnancy - then my daughter died from rare condition'