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Good morning. Tomorrow in the House of Commons there will be a debate on baby loss led by two MPs who have personal experience of the subject. It is one of a number of events for Baby Loss Awareness Week, which aims to draw attention to the need for more support for those who have suffered from miscarriage, still birth or neonatal death. Every day in the UK there are 11 stillbirths- babies born dead between 24 weeks and full term. And every day there are 5 neonatal deaths, of babies who die in the first four weeks of life. As many as 1 in 6 pregnancies ends in miscarriage. As a father of a happy and healthy four month old, I think I have some, but only some, comprehension of the pain and grief which these statistics represent. But I am also really struck by the very considerable number of people affected by these issues - 5 and a half thousand families a year affected by still birth and neonatal death, and countless more by miscarriage. The numbers are so high that most of probably know someone afflicted by these sorrows. And yet it seems that we pursed up Brits may not have actually said anything to that someone. One of the MPs, Antoinette Sandbach, whose son died 5 days after he was born in 2009, has observed that the experience of such loss can be very isolating, since, as she put it 'family and friends don't know what to say'. Baby Loss Awareness Week is partly about pressing for changes in policy and practice to reduce as far as we can the number of miscarriages, still births and neonatal deaths. But it is also about trying to lessen the social silence around these events, where not knowing what to say readily becomes the not saying anything, which leaves grieving families feeling abandoned. Of course just because the losses of these parents are so grievous, it is very hard to know what to say. None of us wants to take on the role of Job's comforters, very false friends indeed with their ill-conceived explanations and consolations for his troubles. Christ himself did not, as far as I can tell, ever, anywhere, in any story, explain anyone's sorrows or offer them a philosophy of suffering. His response is always one of direct and active sympathy. And for us too, a sympathy which is direct and active is better than a sympathy which dare not speak its name. We Brits are rather bad at these things, I think, and I have learnt from my Irish wife to say to begin with what is said to the bereaved in Ireland - 'I am sorry for your loss'. It is not much, but it is a much better start than a silence which can be experienced as simple indifference.