Having spent literally weeks, days and hours at Poole Hospital with our beautiful Ella over the last year or so, I've decided to give something back and try to raise some money for their Child Development Centre (CDC). We're regulars at the CDC, with Ella having hours and hours of physiotherapy, speech and language therapy, OT, music therapy, hydrotherapy... And they helped us reach a diagnosis at the start of 2015 of a random/de novo deletion on the long arm of Ella's 9th chromosome (9q34.3), resulting in Kleefstra Syndrome (www.kleefstrasyndrome.org). We're so proud of our rare, unique, gorgeous girl. She is a tough cookie and continues to come along in leaps and bounds.

So it's time to grit my teeth, get my running shoes on and get ready for running the GSR's 10 miles in October. (It's a bit of a step up from my usual strategy of doing the odd 5k when I have a spare 30 minutes here and there!)

Please help show appreciation for the CDC's ongoing support and the work that they do. With this money they'll be buying equipment to help them carry out their brilliant work with children and families who really need it. 

Thanks so much.

I'll probably tweet a bit about running, so you should be able to see how I'm doing at @southbournemum (www.twitter.com/southbournemum)

And keep up to date with all things Kleefstra Syndrome at @kleefstrasyndro (www.twitter.com/kleefstrasyndro)

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