I've known Emily from the age of 15. We spent our teenage years talking obsessively about being doctors together, physics /our physics teacher Mr Petts, Alan Partridge, Take That and generally avoiding boys. She is just a brilliant and special person. 

She lost her baby, James, a twin, at only 5 weeks old, something no one should ever have to go through. The Shaws are a courageous family who face this tragedy every single second of every day. 

They are now focusing on helping other families, which Emily and Pete as a doctor and a police officer respectively, have always done. 

No one can take away her pain, but I want to show her how much I see her pain and how much I love her and her family by raising money for the very people who tried so desperately to save his little life, and who saved the life of his twin sister only a few weeks after he died. 

This is for Emily, Pete, my gorgeous goddaughter Izzy, her sister Lexy, little Jimmy and all the beautiful babies who GOSH tries to help every second of every day. 

Emily's full story is below.

Our son, James (Little Jimmy) died at just one month old at Great Ormond Street Hospital. We are raising money for GOSH in his Jimmy's name to honour his memory.

At the 12 week scan of my last pregnancy 4 little eyes blinked back at my husband and I. Twins! Furtively hiding in their bunk-bed amniotic sacs. It was the greatest surprise and truly one of my happiest moments of our lives.

On 21st September 2016 our baby boy James William Shaw was born. Three minutes later his twin sister Isabel followed, two beautiful new siblings for our 18 month-old daughter Alexa. Jimmy really was exceptionally handsome with a full head of auburn hair with a highlight streak of blond on his crown, which had seemingly already undergone a designer haircut/styling, so that the nurses at Queen Charlotte’s Hospital nicknamed him ‘One Direction’. Both twins were thriving at home and we were excitedly beginning to look to the future together as a family of five.

At just five and a half weeks old our little Jimmy became suddenly, unexpectedly and desperately unwell with presumed sepsis and a complicating blood clot to his bowel. Despite the heroic efforts of the staff of our local hospital, the Children's Acute Transfer Service (CATS) ambulance team and ultimately Great Ormond Street Hospital Intensive Care Unit, Jimmy could not be saved. He died in our arms on the evening of 31st October, covered in the kisses of his mummy and daddy who told him how loved he was. It is beyond words how traumatised we were left by those 2 days of seeing him so desperately unwell and how bereft Jimmy’s death left us, our hearts were truly broken. Fleeting neonate moments are all we have to hold onto Jimmy. No first smile, steps or words, I can only imagine the potential my little boy will never be able to realise.

Three weeks after Jimmy died, and just two days after we had buried him, his twin sister Izzy too suddenly became unwell of an unrelated condition (a diaphragmatic hernia with malrotation) we were just seemingly that unlucky. Within 24 hours Izzy was undergoing emergency, life-or-death surgery at Great Ormond Street. We genuinely believed we were going to lose a second child that day, it was nothing short of torture. Thankfully Izzy’s operation was successful and she recovered.

I [mummy Emily] am a hospital doctor and I can hand-on-heart honestly say that in my 11 years experience as a clinician I have never seen such a unanimous, continuous and determined effort and bloody-minded resolve to save a life as with Jimmy. The medical staff gave blood, sweat and tears to save my little boy, he received the best possible care in the world, by the most humane doctors and nurses I have ever met and for that I am beholden to them. Beyond the world-class care both he and Izzy received at GOSH, our family received unbounded care and kindness, practical support (such as neighbouring accommodation) and pastoral support that continues to this day (including bereavement counselling). GOSH gave us our very best hope of saving Jimmy, saved the life of Izzy and took extremely delicate and humane care of us parents in the process.

Very soon after these experiences we became resolved on trying to repay some of our perceived incalculable debt to GOSH, nurture something positive out of such a tragic loss and continue to strive to keep Jimmy’s memory alive. We are pulling together an army of impossibly loyal family and friends to join us in fundraising a hugely ambitious amount of money for GOSH, specifically in Jimmy’s name, as his legacy. We are aiming to raise £107,649 to buy two much needed, new ventilator's for their CATS retrieval team. Please join us in fundraising and/or give what you can.

Love and gratitude from Pete, Emily, Lexy and Izzy Shaw xx