Utterly heartbreaking
Stella Pirko and Anthony Meyers were as ecstatic as new parents-to-be are when they found out that Stella was pregnant.
But when a scan at 28 weeks showed that their baby's bladder had enlarged to a dangerous size, they were advised by their doctor to terminate the pregnancy.
Devastatingly, they made the tough choice to end the pregnancy.
But the couple, from Sydney, Australia, were dealt yet another cruel blow when they discovered that her body had been cremated without them knowing.
Stella and Anthony, who had named the baby Krystal Rose, requested the hospital to carry out an autopsy and genetic testing on the baby to discover why this had happened.
However, staff at Liverpool Hospital never processed the request as the paperwork "went missing", and Australian news site Nine News found that the position of mortuary technician was scrapped three months before this occurred.
Stella told Nine News: "We trusted them to do their jobs - to find out what happened to our baby. We cannot fathom how this happened. I came home, I was suffering... I was a mother without a baby and it was so hard."
Anthony said: "The baby was down in the storage room, no one cared, no one did anything."
The couple said that the thought of having answers to why this terrible thing had happened would have comforted them and were told to wait for a phone call inviting them back to the hospital to discuss the findings of the report.
But that phone call never came - instead, they received a call from a consultant at the hospital nearly a MONTH after Krystal had been born asking whether Stella had given permission for the cremation to happen.
This was the first Stella knew of it.
Anthony said: "Now we're stuck five months after the baby has been delivered, we don't have answers. What is the chance if we fall pregnant again, this going to happen to us again?
"For us, an apology is not going to bring our baby back, an apology is not going to give us answers."
The couple, who were planning to get married in July, have now postponed their wedding indefinitely. Stella said: "It has impacted our lives, in a dramatic and horrific way."
Robynne Cooke, who is the General Manager at Liverpool Hospital, told Nine News that she had apologised to the couple.
She said: "The hospital got it wrong. I am so sorry that we let them down."
She also told the reporters that an investigation into the case had created safeguards to ensure that it wouldn't happen again.
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