RNZ podcast The Unthinkable, hosted by Morning Report's Susie Ferguson and co-produced by Liz Garton, has taken out the gold award for Personal Lives Podcast at the New York Festivals Awards.
Susie Ferguson says the podcast wouldn’t have been possible without Kate and Sam – the couple at the centre of the podcast – generously sharing their story.
The Unthinkable tells the story of the family’s experience with loss and heartbreak at the death of their baby - Wren.
Photo: RNZ/Jayne Joyce
Ferguson tells Jesse Mulligan she was blown away with the news of the podcast taking the top award.
"I mean it was great to be a finalist and that happened a few months back, and to get the gold and get that level of recognition from the international radio industry just blew me away."
She says she became interested in exploring the topic after hearing about acquaintances whose babies had died - the first of which was eight years ago.
"That was actually the first of many and over the following five years, we knew five families just in Wellington, who had this happen to them, who experienced the loss of a baby."
Ferguson remembers Kate and Sam in particular because she heard the news of the baby's death on her 10th wedding anniversary.
"We just couldn't stop thinking about what had happened to our friend.
"Then when Kate and Sam became pregnant again quite quickly after Wren's death, I thought I wonder if she'd talk to me, I wonder if she'd do interviews over the course of that second pregnancy [about] how do you pick up the pieces and how do you figure that out."
So she attentively asked Kate, and against her own expectations, the couple agreed, Ferguson says.
"We just started doing interviews and banked them and I didn't know what we'd ever fashion it into, and it became The Unthinkable.
"In the meantime, we had another friend who became our fifth friend who this happened to.
"I suppose because it was not personal to me, but it was personal to my immediate friends and I could see the awful situation so many of them are going through and I thought this is something we don't talk about, we never talk about it, maybe we should actually."
This week is also baby loss awareness week - which Ferguson says is hugely important to have because we don't realise how common this is.
"I remember [specialist Vicki Culling] sitting and talking me through the stats and saying to me, 'that's twice the road toll', and that was the real kind of gut punch for me because we talk about the road toll a lot ... it's quite common and it's not taboo.
"Whereas I think for a lot of people it seems so against the natural order of things that a child, such a new little human, dies. People are very uncomfortable, and they find it really hard to talk about and to put it into words, I think we have a natural aversion to it."
Ferguson says bereaved parents do want to talk about it because it's a huge part of their lives.
"The only way to become more comfortable is to sit with it and sit with people and let people talk about it, and for that to be a welcome part of their conversation because it's part of their whānau, it's part of their life experience, and we need to acknowledge it."
It's important to give parents space to talk about child loss, she says.
"Anecdotally from knowing people who go through this, there are certain times of the year that are difficult. The run up to the birthday, as you can imagine, can often be incredibly hard.
"I think being gentle, being mindful, even just sending a text to people when you know it's their difficult time of year, I think can mean a lot to people because it is hard and people I think want to be able to acknowledge and want to be able to talk about it."
Other awards at the festival for RNZ podcasts include Alison Ballance’s Voices from Antarctica – which received silver in the Environment & Ecology Documentary category - and William Ray’s Black Sheep – which received a bronze in the History Documentary category.
