THE grieving parents of a stillborn baby raised £7,000 in just nine weeks to pay for a cold cot at the Royal Blackburn Hospital.

Sarah Bernasconi and partner Mark Parsons’ baby girl Maggie was stillborn at Burnley General Hospital eleven weeks ago.

MORE TOP STORIES:

To cope with their grief, they threw themselves into fundraising to buy one of the specialist cots for Royal Blackburn Hospital so that other parents can hold on to their baby a little longer.

“No words can describe the pain that we are feeling,” said Sarah. “We didn’t think we would be angel mummy and angel daddy, but we are.

“We wanted to make sure that parents in Blackburn had a cot like we had in Burnley.”

The skin of stillborns begins to change and break down after a couple of hours, which can limit the time a family would be able to spend with their baby.

A cold cot is designed to keep a baby’s body cool after its death, allowing parents and family to have a longer period to say goodbye.

Sarah, 34, and Mark, 36, from Blackburn, had the cot engraved with their daughter’s name on so that her legacy lives on.

They also donated 12 memory boxes for parents to take home a box to fill with items in after their baby is stillborn.

“It’s very, very hard but I’m glad that Maggie now has her legacy and she’ll never be forgotten,” said Sarah.

Angela O’Toole, head of midwifery at East Lancashire Hospitals Trust, said : “We are extremely grateful to Sarah and Mark for their fundraising to buy an additional cold cot and memory boxes that other parents at the trust will benefit from.”