When Janice Norman was rushed in for an emergency Caesarean at nearly seven months' pregnant, she didn't link it to being accidentally shoved in the stomach five weeks earlier on a crowded train.

It was only after the 34-year-old's tiny baby was born and doctors asked if she had suffered an accident at 25 weeks' gestation that she realised the two were connected.

Baby Eliza, Janice's first and only child, died on New Year's Day, having lived for five days. She had stopped developing at 25 weeks, which a postmortem examination found was due to a trauma injury to the placenta Eliza's vital source of food.

Dealing with the death of her baby, in the knowledge that it could have been avoided had she been sitting down on that November train, was hard for Janice to swallow.

It is only now, nine months on, that she is able to speak publicly of her tragedy, and is highlighting herself in an appeal to commuters backed by Carshalton MP Tom Brake to give up their seats.

Janice, of Rice Lane, Carshalton, was travelling at about 6.45pm on a train from Clapham Junction to Carshalton. She said: "I was visibly pregnant. It was a crowded train and this man was barging through, getting annoyed at people for not moving down then he shoved me in the stomach. I asked him how he would feel if that was his pregnant partner, and his argument was Britain's such a wonderful country, that no one has offered you a seat'." It was then that someone finally sacrificed their seat.

That night a midwife told Janice there was no sign of damage.

But five weeks' later, after noticing there had not been much kicking, she was taken into theatre with foetal distress.

Janice said: "I have thought about this a lot. Something needs to be done to make people aware that this can happen."

After hearing her story, Mr Brake is calling for an awareness-raising campaign featuring Janice to be run on public transport. He says: "This case highlights in a tragic way the need for a considerate commuters campaign. If people had given up their seats straight away this would never have happened."