We just wanted to share our story, hopefully raise some money and be able to provide some support networks and useful links in the event that this happens to anyone else.

Some of you may or may not know, but my Partner (Robyn) and I sadly lost our baby back in September we were in our 20th week of the pregnancy. We unfortunately suffered a Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes (PROM) where we were rushed into St. Michael’s hospital, admitted to Ward 78 which is a midwifery lead ward, and the nurses/midwives were amazing from the minute we arrived, and we had one to one care in a private room. Several scenarios were explained to us on what the possible outcomes could be, we spent a number of days in the ward contemplating the outcomes that we were faced with and we had to think about the wellbeing of both Robyn and our baby and on the fifth day we were sadly induced into labour and on the 22/09/23 we met our little boy.

The following hours were some of the hardest that I have had to deal with, once again the team at St. Michael’s were amazing with us and brought him to us in homemade crochet blanket and hat which were kindly donated to them by members of surrounding retirement homes. They also brought to us a Memory Box from the charity 4 Louis, which allowed us to capture his hands & footprints and provided us notes and letters from previous families that have been through the same situation and matching teddy bears, so that you can keep one give you comfort knowing that there will be something that you and you baby both have. The hospital then provided us with a Certificate of Birth from SANDS, which gave us something else to take home and remember him by and provided something physical to help us in that moment. We then took all this and other items we had for him and made a bigger memory box which will stay with us.

As a society we tend not to talk about the sad things that may happen within pregnancy, and it’s not till after the fact that others made it aware that they have been through something similar and the more that you look into the statistics the more you realise how common this unfortunately happens and it is such a devastating thing that we do not wish for anyone to go through but the more we can talk about it and provide help the somewhat easier we can make it for people.

The reason why we have chosen to send this out now is that we are two weeks from our Due Date and Robyn & I wanted to try and raise some money for these Memory Boxes to be provided to St. Michael’s for families who might faces these difficult times to provide that element of comfort in their time of need.

We understand that you might not be able to but if you can we ask if you can spare some money to help.