UPDATED below!
Thanks for taking the time to visit our JustGiving page, in aid of SANDS, the stillbirth and neonatal death charity.
Every day, 17 babies are stillborn or die shortly after birth in the UK. 17 is such a small number in isolation but it's such a huge loss to the families and society each time this happens.
More personally this has been brought home to us by the birth and loss of our son Joe, born sleeping on 19 July 2009 at 2.45pm, weighing 2lb 13oz. Joe was almost 30 weeks' old, born too soon.
We've many angels, and these losses and the death of our son have inspired us to try and do something a bit more in our lives and as parents to his big sister Sofie to make this little boy proud as he watches us from above. So we've set ourselves a challenge - to raise money in his name, to become a better and stronger family, and raise awareness of such a massive hole in too many parents' lives.
You can help by donating money to support Sands' work in Joe's name, and by suggesting new and creative things for us to do to take this inspiration to the highest level we can over the next year or so. We will in turn put lots of info about our fundraising plans on here, and invite you to join in too, where we can - who knows? You may be inspired yourselves!
Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.
So please dig deep and donate now.
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01/08/09: Thank you so much to all our friends, particularly those on Hitched/BT who have already swelled the coffers to over £600 before we've had a chance to get our trainers on! We're still drawing together our list of challenges on the theme of 17 (hence the target) and we'll put them on here soon, so you can laugh at us and maybe stop laughing long enough to find a few more pennies. Thank you all again, Gavin and Marie x
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01/03/09: Thank you so much again to all our friends who have helped us to reach the amazing total of £1,000 with relative ease. It's such a good cause, and we can't begin to thank each and every person for their donation, which is more than just money - it's awareness, it's support, and it's a shoulder for us when things are tough, as they still very much are.
What have we been doing? Well we've been raiding the loft, and together with family, car-boots and eBay have an estimated offline haul of £300 to add to the coffers. Gavin has been planning a skydive from 10,000 feet. More on that later but I (Marie) am so very proud of my husband. I envy him the chance to get closer to our boy, up there in the sky.
We've been quite productive elsewhere as well. Marie is pregnant again. We have Sofie, Jamie and Joe's little brother arriving this summer. This pregnancy is difficult (understatement). What we can say without a doubt is it would be much much harder without the support of our local Havering SANDS group, our family, friends and the team at Queen's Hospital. Our wish is to bring our baby home safely. By continuing our efforts to raise money we hope to help others to achieve that wish too, and we hope that we can help to make the same support available to those whose days are so very dark. Your continued good wishes for us, and your donations, are our light. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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23/03/10: Gavin is jumping out of a plane! We've moved this particular event to a dedicated page as we wanted donations for this particular moment of bravado to go directly to Havering SANDS. We're hoping this might help to contribute the last few pounds needed for the labour room fund, set up to help to soundproof one room at Queen's hospital for use by those affected by stillbirth and neonatal loss. The Havering SANDS team are working tirelessly to support this fund, and if you feel this could be something you would like to donate towards, why not reward Gavin for finally managing to get 10,000 feet away from his wife and then throwing himself out of a plane?
More details and donations here:http://www.justgiving.com/Gavinsjump4Joe
General donations to the national SANDS fund on this page continue to be very welcome of course!
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Thought for the day:Why not add us to your Facebook page, your email signature, or your Twitter? It all helps. Use the link at the top of this page, or for Facebook, you can use the JustGiving app to put this on your profile.