Ali Harris on baby loss and the importance of honouring grief
Happy Mum Happy Baby
Giovanna Fletcher
4.8 • 5.7K Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2025
⏱️ 94 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On this week's episode, Giovanna sits down with author Ali Harris for a deeply moving conversation about love, loss and finding hope through grief.
Ali carried her third child, Poppy, for just under twenty-four weeks until the day she delivered her, knowing she had already died. She opens up to Gi about navigating this loss, and how she has channeled that pain, healing, and hope into writing.
Her latest novel received countless rejections - “no one wants to read about baby loss'. But Ali was determined to create space for these stories in fiction, not only for the millions of women who know this grief firsthand, but also to help bring these experiences into the wider world of storytelling.
Ali's new book, This Wasn’t Meant to Happen, is available from September 11th.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on Happy Mom, Happy Baby. |
| 0:03.8 | This bit's really hard to talk about and it's not something I've shared a lot because it feels |
| 0:09.2 | deeply personal and it is something that isn't talked about a lot, you know, even within |
| 0:12.4 | how much the conversation around baby loss has grown over the last 11 years. |
| 0:16.5 | We were put in the situation that I had never heard of. |
| 0:19.7 | Delivering Poppy, having her naturally was something that she and I shared. |
| 0:24.3 | And that has become something that I am incredibly grateful for. |
| 0:29.5 | But I would never have been able to have been told that at the time by anybody. |
| 0:34.4 | How is there not a place for that when we are inundated with stories of complete |
| 0:38.3 | horror, when there are thrillers, when there is domestic abuse, when there is... |
| 0:41.3 | It blows my mind. |
| 0:42.3 | When we have horror upon horror thrust upon us on television in film, and yet something |
| 0:47.3 | that is tragic but beautiful, something that gives baby lost parents this gift of infinite love that we treasure forever and that we want to |
| 0:56.8 | honour and you're telling us that there isn't a place on the shelves for it. |
| 1:00.6 | This episode of Happy Mum, Happy Baby is sponsored by Lego, |
| 1:04.9 | where learning and play go hand in hand as toddlers create, imagine and explore. |
| 1:10.1 | As a mum, I know how important those early years are. |
| 1:13.7 | They go by in such a blur, don't they? I still remember sitting on the floor with Buzz, Buddy and |
| 1:18.6 | Max building these little houses and castles and honestly, the look of pure pride at their creations. |
| 1:24.5 | I loved it. And did you know that 90% of a child's brain develops before |
| 1:28.8 | the age of five? That's why playtime is so much more than just fun. Lego Duplo sets are |
| 1:35.4 | specifically designed for little hands and they help children build not only houses and rocket |
... |
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