As Char Te Hira sat on the couch with her cup of tea, her friend Mel Edmonds sat close by. Two strong women brought closer in their friendship by a similar tragedy.
For Char, June marked the one-year anniversary of the loss of her son.
"It's all a blur now really," she said. "I was seven weeks away from my due date. One day he just stopped moving. I'd been so busy working that I hadn't really taken notice of these things, but one night I just said to my partner, Reg, that the baby hadn't moved all day. He said he was probably just sleeping.
"But I woke up the next morning and baby still hadn't moved. So we rang the midwife, and went up to the hospital. They spent an hour trying to find a heartbeat. The midwife couldn't find one; neither could the obstetrician, so they got the scanner. But there was nothing," she said.
In November 2013, Mel found out she was expecting her fourth child.
"We announced that we were expecting a baby and went in for a routine dating scan to see how far along we were and we were around the three-month mark. At the scan they asked if I could go in for another one two weeks later, and it was then that we found out that we had lost the baby. They said 'sorry for your loss' but they didn't acknowledge it as a baby. No emotion, no empathy. I guess to them it's their job, not really anything, but when you're starting to prepare for the future and where this baby fits in your family, it makes you numb," she said.
Dave Tomlinson, from Creative Stone in Claudelands, also understands the grief associated with the loss of a child. His partner has suffered the loss of more than one child before birth.
Dave started making porcelain photos for headstones mid-2012 and decided as part of that, he wanted to do something community spirited.
"Looking around, we chose to help with the Kowhai Lawn. I know the loss of a child is at the high end of the grief scale," he said.
The Kowhai Lawn provides a secluded area for parents to inter stillborn babies at Newstead Cemetery.
"At the time the council charged $98 for a permit fee to put a plaque on the Kowhai Lawn. After a bit of lobbying they dropped the fee down to $40. So now when we make a plaque, the family only have to pay the $40 to put it on the pedestal."
The plaques themselves cost around $300 to make, and although the Kowhai Lawn is purely for stillborn babies, Dave said he also sells plaques for a fee on a case-by-case basis, for families to take home.
"Not everyone wants to bury his or her child out there. Some choose to cremate their baby and take the ashes home. And before the gestation of 20 weeks there are no rules whatsoever," he said.
Mel said losing her child to a miscarriage rather than still birth made her feel like her loss was almost insignificant.
"Char had been through what she had been through about five months before. She had lost an almost term baby. She was my support. She made my loss real, relevant. I thought because I hadn't experienced what she had that I wasn't supposed to grieve, that I wasn't supposed to feel anything. But I did. It's still loss. Miscarriage is a horrible thing to go through. You're just waiting for your baby to go, to pass from your body," she said.
The miscarriage was unsuccessful so Mel underwent a procedure to extract the remains.
"That was traumatic. You have to go down to delivery suite first, where women were arriving to have their live babies, and then they take you up and walk you to the Meade Clinical Centre where the day surgeries are. You're walking past all these people with newborns. It was like a slap in the face," she said.
It was around this time Char was attending the Sands counselling group (pregnancy, baby, and infant loss support) which is where she first heard about what Creative Stone was doing.
"I didn't go to Sands for a couple of months. The whole grieving process took a long time for me. But it helped for me to let everything out, and be around people who have been through a similar situation. I took Mel along a few times, that's when we found out through Dave's partner, about these beautiful plaques. I thought it was lovely and in the back of my mind I thought, I'd love one of those, but just didn't get around to talking to them about getting one. I'm really grateful Mel arrange to get them done."
Char and Mel have helped each other through the grieving process, and both women say their plaques have been a huge part of that.
"I had a lot of grieving the day before, when we found out Kaahu was dead. So when he was born, everyone in the room was crying but me. I just couldn't feel. But it actually took me months to deal with it. This plaque is something special for us. Its helped me through this process. Being able to grieve is so important. And everyone grieves differently," said Char.
"For me, it's been a release. It's like I'm letting go," said Mel.