A HEAVILY-PREGNANT woman strolls into Poole Hospital's ante-natal clinic. She is leaning on her partner's arm and smiling up at him.

You can almost sense the young couple's excitement as they contemplate the new life they've created together.

But in another room upstairs, only a few corridors away, another couple are trying to come to terms with the fact that their baby will never be born.

Every day in the UK 17 babies are stillborn or die within the first 28 days of life. One in five pregnancies end in miscarriage.

Poole Hospital is one of the few places in the country that offers a comprehensive support network for grieving parents.

Heather Matthews, a trained midwife and counsellor, who founded the counselling service 15 years ago, also set up SPRING (Supporting Parents and Relatives in Neonatal Grief).

As the charity moves into its tenth year, Heather is standing down although she will still be involved with the charity's support groups.

"Working as a midwife I realised there was a real lack of emotional support for women who were having difficult pregnancies or labour or who had suffered baby loss, " she tells the Echo.

"I carried out some research and found out that how well parents coped with it all boiled down to the help they had received."

Now the charity is funding a new bereavement support co-ordinator and trainer. It's a brand new role taken on by local nurse and midwife Gena Evans.

"The majority of midwives here felt the post should have existed a long time ago. There is no extra NHS funding available so we're very lucky that Spring was able to fund it," says Gena who, apart from a four year spell working overseas, has been based at Poole since 1979.

Like many people in her profession, Gena isn't used to selling herself and needs a bit of prompting to talk about her personal qualities that equip her to do what is undoubtedly a challenging and often very difficult job.

"Well there's plenty of people here who could do it. There's certainly more to it than being a good listener - you need to be emphatic.

"You also need to be able to adapt too. One minute you are in the room crying with a couple who are totally devastated because they have just lost their baby and then you have to walk into another room and share in the joy of a couple who have just found out they're pregnant again after a previous loss."

It sounds like an exhausting emotional roller-coaster and I wondered if she would ever get hardened to it.

"You can't witness another human being's devastation and be impervious to it," she says.

"As a mother of three children it certainly makes me very grateful that I've not had to go through anything like that although I lost a nephew a few years ago which does give you more of an insight into the job.

"Over time you do develop a self-protection mechanism to enable you to walk away at the end of the day. But everybody is different - they cope in different ways."

Gena who works flexi-time three days a week, is at pains to stress that she's not a trained counsellor.

"Most bereaved people don't require counselling because what they are feeling is a normal reaction to a dreadful situation.

"I offer emotional and practical support although I do work closely with the counselling service here so I can always ask for advice if I'm not sure a particular situation is within my remit."

Although Gena tends to downplay her personal qualities, it's clear that it takes a special type of person to be able to do the job.

"Unfortunately in life, child birth is not always as smooth and straightforward as we would like," she explains.

"But to be able to help people who are going through one of the most traumatic experiences of their life and to be able to give them real support at such a time I see as a real privilege."

WHAT IS SPRING?

Spring (Supporting Parents and Relatives In Neonatal Grief) was set up to provide support to parents and relatives who have experienced the death of a baby during pregnancy, at, or just after birth. This includes miscarriage, stillbirth and termination for foetal abnormality. It is run by bereaved parents, relatives and health professionals. The aim is to support families through counselling, befriending and monthly support meetings