On 8 October, more than 100 brilliant humans ran London's Royal Parks Half Marathon in memory of my nephew James, to raise money for the Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity.

On the same day, a few friends and I ran the same distance - on the other side of the planet in Sydney, Australia. Crossing the Harbour Bridge and passing the Opera House, we ran through Hyde Park and Centennial Park before finishing on Bondi Beach.

I want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has donated so far, sponsoring me or any one of the dozens of other fundraising pages all linked to the Little Jimmy Brighter Future Fund. 

For everyone else, please give us a pat on the back and a few dollars for our achievement! 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. So it's the most efficient way to donate - saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So that you understand what moved me and so many others to do this, , please read Little Jimmy's story from his mummy - my sister-in-law Emily:

Our son, James (Little Jimmy) died at just one month old at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Three weeks later they saved the life of his twin sister Isabel. We are raising money for GOSH to buy two new very specialist ventilators in his Jimmy's name to honour his memory.

We need to raise £107K in total. You can follow our grand total (combining all our contributors) pages on this link: https://www.justgiving.com/remember/407805/James-Shaw

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. At just five and a half weeks old our little Jimmy became suddenly, unexpectedly and desperately unwell with presumed sepsis (an overwhelming infection) 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.

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 12 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.

With £73,000 raised in total so far, we have now paid for one new ‘Sophie’ ventilator for Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in James’ name and are well on our way to buying the second (we need £107,649 in all). Sophie ventilators are used to support children who need Extra Corporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO). ECMO is a form of breathing support that acts like an artificial lung, adding oxygen to the blood and continuously pumping it around the body. Sick newborns cannot travel with an ECMO machine, so they need special breathing support so that they may be retrieved safely from other hospitals to GOSH. There ventilators will save the lives of sick babies who previously may not have survived transport on conventional ventilation. One of the Sophie ventilators we are purchasing will be used by the Children’s Acute Transfer Service (CATS) team bringing sick newborns to GOSH, while the other will be used within GOSH.

Please give whatever you can.

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