Termination for Medical Reasons (TFMR) is a deeply personal and often misunderstood experience, particularly for families in regional and rural communities. At Red Nose, we are honoured to walk alongside families across Australia as they navigate the unimaginable grief of losing a baby.
Through the support of The Phoebe Joan Foundation, Red Nose has been able to expand vital services like the Hospital to Home program—ensuring compassionate, specialist bereavement care reaches families wherever they live.
This is Chloe’s story
This is Chloe’s story: a mother from rural Australia who made the heartbreaking decision to have a TFMR after a devastating prenatal diagnosis. With the support of Red Nose and The Phoebe Joan Foundation, Chloe and her family were able to find connection, care, and healing after saying goodbye to their baby boy, Samson.
I was 13 weeks pregnant with our second child when an ultrasound showed abnormalities. Seeing my baby on the ultrasound screen while having an amniocentesis confirming he would need a lifetime of operations and care broke our heart. We had two hard roads to choose from, and we chose to have a Termination for Medical Reason (TFMR).
Awaiting our TFMR
It was the longest, most painful wait in the lead up to our induction day. Only a handful of people in our small rural community knew I was pregnant, so I got about life trying to hide this growing bump that I knew I had to say goodbye to.
Finding support after our TFMR
At 19 weeks I was induced and gave birth to little Samson. We returned home to the farm with intense feelings of grief, but hardly anyone knew why we had disappeared for a week. I still think how horribly unfair it is on us parents who have been through a TFMR to feel we need to grieve in silence because of the ‘taboo’ society has placed on our choice for our baby.
However, I also think how lucky I was to be placed in the caring hands of our Red Nose Grief Support Worker, Megan, through the ‘Hospital to Home’ program. She guided me through some very tough initial days and how to navigate this complicated grief. We planted a memory tree and learnt how to involve our two-year-old son in our family’s grieving process.
Being a rural client and being able to access ‘Hospital to Home’ over the phone made such a great impact on our healing. We will forever be thankful for the help this program provided.
Red Nose is deeply grateful to The Phoebe Joan Foundation for helping us support families like Chloe’s through their most difficult times. Learn more.
Hospital to Home Program: Supporting Families After Loss
The Hospital to Home program offers vital, compassionate support to families who have experienced the death of a baby or infant through stillbirth, including due to TFMR, neonatal death, or sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI). This program provides outreach support to grieving parents within three months of their loss and is available across Australia.
Phoebe Joan Foundation
The Phoebe Joan Project has enabled Red Nose to expand access to bereavement care for families living in regional and remote communities. Families experiencing the devastation of stillbirth including termination for medical reasons (TFMR) after 16 weeks and newborn and baby death, can now receive the same high-quality, compassionate support online as those in major cities; ensuring no family is left behind because of where they live.
These services, delivered by Bereavement Support Workers with lived experience of baby loss, provide to those living in rural and remote communities
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