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In September 2009, my wife Lucy and I lost our first boy, Roan George Crawshaw. At 39 weeks a very rare fetal hemorrhage caused our child to be taken from us. Our little boy had no chance. Suffice to say the change in emotion from elation to desperation is one that I never wish to repeat. To see my wife go through the trauma of this news, through delivery and then the funeral was frankly horrific. That being said, to see my wife come through the other side of this only fills with me with pride at utmost respect for her.

In hindsight, there is so many people to thank. The family, the friends, the midwives, the consultants, the vicar. The list can go on and on.

However, from my perspective a massive thanks must go to the people we didn't even know!

The baby loss board on FaceBook that Lucy could confide in. I was next to useless in terms of emotional support. I wanted to just shut myself away from it all! She had a great deal of support from the ladies on there who sadly had gone through the same experiences. This I thank them all - you know who you are

And of course the reason for setting up this page - SANDS. Their guidance and support was invaluable. The real eye-opener was to hear 17 families per day in the UK (!!) go through this same scenario. That just breaks my heart to think of these families on a daily basis

Some 6 years on, we are today blessed with two beautiful boys and with god willing a little sister for them at the end of this month. :)

This period of our lives has taught us a lot about ourselves and the dynamics of a relationship. Dare I say it has taught us to be better parents based on our experience. This does not mean we are better versus other parents, I would never state such a thing. In fact its quite difficult to define my comment. I suppose we are very grateful that these children are in our lives and we have learnt not to expect them but rather appreciate we are blessed by them.

So, After 6 years it is my turn to repay the support to SANDS by involving myself in a small 100km jaunt across the South West of England. This is the least I can do as a token of my gesture towards this great charity.

For those of you reading this page or supporting my FaceBook Blog, I hope not to guilt trip you into parting with your money based on our experience, but to think about the fact of 17 families today, tomorrow, the next day, an on and on that will suffer these same life changing events. It is SANDS that is pioneering the way to get this number reduced and in parallel supporting families like Lucy and I.

Thank you so much from the Crawshaw Family

Steve x