Church Army evangelists Nikki and Matt Foster-Kruzcek feature on BBC One
22 February 2005
Church Army evangelists Matt and Nikki Foster-Kruzcek were featured on the BBC current affairs TV programme, Inside Out, this week. The show was broadcast across the West Midlands at 7:30pm on Monday 21 February 2005, and featured in depth interviews with three different couples on their experiences of multiple miscarriages.
Matt and Nikki lost three children through miscarriage in early pregnancy. For the couple, the burden of trying to grieve three separate children was overwhelming. Nikki explains, “For a year after our third child died, I raged at God in ways I never thought I was capable of. I blamed him for what was happening, for allowing something that should have been joyful to become so heartbreaking…God felt a long way away”
“I could so easily have lost all faith…But one day I suddenly realised that God wasn’t a long way away but right next to me taking everything – all the bile and anger and pain and yes, the hatred that I could throw at him and accepting it all willingly and lovingly. God is that big! That he could cope with me. And when I was done, he was still there, reminding me that his child has died too.”
According to the BBC programme, as many as one in four pregnancies end in miscarriage, and although most women later go on and carry their pregnancies to term, for a small number of women, recurrent baby loss occurs. For Matt and Nikki, the loss of their third baby led to the couple coming to terms with the prospect of life without children.
“We didn’t officially decide to stop trying, but we found out that having talked to each other later on that I thought exactly the same as Matt which was, ‘I can’t do this again,” explains Nikki.
A lthough the recovery process has been slow, both Matt and Nikki have decided to share their experience to help others so that they too in Nikki’s words “will know the hope that is ours through Christ.” The couple both work as telephone helpline volunteers for the Miscarriage Association and Nikki is a member of the organisation's board of trustees.
Last year Nikki led the act of remembrance during Babyloss Awareness Week and Matt and Nikki’s story was featured in a two page article in the Winter 2004 issue of Families Together Magazine.
Matt also supports men through the experience of miscarriage, and is actively trying to raise awareness of the father’s role. “People tend to concentrate and focus on the experience of the mother in miscarriage, and often forget that there is very often a grieving father too,” states Matt. “The question was very rarely ‘how are you?’ but instead was ‘how is she?’ So now I feel it’s important to remind people that the dad needs support too, not only in how he cares for the mother, but also in his own bereavement.”
To read more about Matt and Nikki Foster-Kruzcek’s feature on Inside Out, please click here
For more information on miscarriage, please visit
The Miscarriage Association www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk
SANDS (Stillbirth and neonatal death society) www.uk-sands.org
Ectopic Pregnancy Trust www.ectopic.org
ARC (antenatal results and choices) www.arc-uk.org
Babyloss.com www.babyloss.com
