As some of you may know some very close friends to us have recently been through very tough times.Several of us have decided to run the Sole Destroyer Mucky race on the 19th March to raise money for SANDS a charity that has help our friends. Please read our best friends story below to understand why we are compelled to raise money for SANDS.

"Most of you reading this will already know why we feel we would like to offer something back to SANDS and raise awareness to such a great charity. For those of you that don't know our story we will share it with you:

We found out we were having a baby and felt a mixture of emotions. Scared, anxious, and worried to begin with; but soon we felt happy and allowed ourselves to become excited. Our 12 week scan went to plan and we got the go ahead that all was fine. We thought that was it, and we were in the clear. What could now go wrong?! Very naive now we now know!

At the 20 week scan our baby appeared very small, so we got called back to see the fetal  medicine doctor, who agreed that baby was small, and also had fluid on the left kidney, and a possible curve to the spine. This flagged up a few different things, so I had an amino and blood tests to see what it could be. At this point we really didn't feel very positive and couldn't help but think of the worse. The results came back good, and we (again) naively thought all would be ok with a bit of extra TLC. 
We later found out that our baby had something called Wolf-Hirsschorn Syndrome This syndrome only affects 1 in 50,000. As parents we felt the kindest thing to do was terminate the pregnancy. The thought of our baby being prone to regular heart attacks and seizures, being severely disabled and having growth problems (to name a few) was unbearable. That's if he had even survived labour, which would have been less likely. The feeling of guilt still remains, even though deep down we know we did what was best for the 3 of us long term. 
I gave birth to Oscar on the 10th November. It has been the worst time of our lives but with the support of friends and family we are doing "ok".
The reason we would like to give something back to SANDS is because without them we wouldn't have the memory box we have. They provided teddys, blankets, photos, and hand and foot prints; all of which we can keep forever and share with family and friends. The support they offer to bereaved families is amazing. They offer online, over the phone, or group support meetings; which continuously helps families going through an extremely tough time. They also do loads of research to try and prevent still birth. 

Hopefully with donations we, and (countless others affected by stillbirth) make, they can eventually lower the number of babies born in such a way."