Our beautiful little girl Florence Elizabeth Winnie O’Rourke was born in March 2022 with an upper limb difference called Syndactyly on her left hand.  

This wasn’t picked up on any of the antenatal scans so when she was born we were shocked, upset and continually asked ourselves ‘why her?’.  We left the hospital with absolutely no information about her condition and spent the first few months of her life being upset, worried about her future, worried about being bullied, worried about how many surgeries she would need throughout her life and desperately Googling to try find out more information.  As parents, this is something that we should never have been left to do. 

Through our desperate attempts to educate ourselves about her limb difference, we discovered Reach. Reach is a charity which operates with volunteers & relies completely on fundraising to survive. This charity and platform has provided us with priceless knowledge about limb differences, connected us with other parents experiencing the same feelings as us and showed us how children with limb differences can achieve absolutely everything they want, nothing is out for reach for them.  

Reach arrange family weekends away on a regular basis for parents to connect and children to make friends with children who are just like them. They also arrange donations for children to get adaptable musical instruments, adaptable cars for driving lessons, the list is endless. Several celebrities including Paralympians, Briony May Willliams from Great British Bake Off and the comedian Alex Brooker are ambassadors for the charity and regularly raise money and attend the family events. Quarterly newsletters are mailed out to all families with updates on Reach children’s achievements, supportive messages etc. They go above and beyond to ensure no family feels alone. 

Florence will require several surgeries & skin grafts throughout her life.  

She now has a medical team behind her which consists of a Congenital Hand Surgeon who is known as one of the best in the world, a Physiotherapist for post operation treatments and a Psychosocial Practitioner who will support both Florence and our family on how to navigate life with a limb difference and how to deal with questions when she goes to school etc.  We are extremely blessed to have this amazing team behind us. 

She had her first surgery in January 2023 when she was only 10 months old. This surgery was 3.5hrs long & has given her a thumb which has been life changing for her. 

Her 2nd surgery has been scheduled for December 2023 which should hopefully give her an index finger. 

We will have continuous hospital appointments & surgeries over the coming years. 

Reach have given us so much comfort and eased the worry about what her future may look like, for Florence and all the other babies who are born with limb differences, their future is bright. We will forever be grateful to Reach & everything they do.

Also a special thanks to all the families we have connected with through the Reach social media pages on Instagram & Facebook. Being able to reach out to each other, share experiences, worries, challenges & achievements has just been amazing, it has made a massive difference to our mental health & anxieties in such a positive way. We will forever be grateful to all these families who have now become friends & we hope that we will be able to get all our babies together in the future to meet each other. 

As a token of appreciation, I have dedicated 2023 to raising as much money as possible for this amazing charity who have truly made a massive impact on our whole family on almost a daily basis, we honestly don’t know where we would be right now without them.

I also want to take this opportunity to raise more awareness about limb differences. 

I will be running the Blast Half Marathon in Edinburgh in December, Glentress Trail Half Marathon in the Scottish Borders in February, an Ultra Marathon in the Scottish Highlands in May, the Edinburgh Marathon also in May, the Backyard Highlander Ultra 24hr Marathon, an 90km Ultra Marathon in October & the Blast Half Marathon again in December alongside several other organised running events along the way to help with the training. 

I know times are tough at the moment but if everyone could even just donate the same amount as their morning coffee it would be life changing to other families like it has been to us. Again, Reach can only continue their amazing work through fundraising so every penny counts  

I have created an Instagram page to hold me accountable and share my progress along the way, appreciate if you could give me a follow at… Running4Reach

https://instagram.com/running4reach?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y