Our beautiful baby boy was diagnosed with Bilateral Multicystic Dysplastic Kidneys at his 20 week scan and we were told his condition was “incompatible with life”. We loved him so much we could not make the decision to part from him and decided to continue our journey with him, not knowing how long he would survive pregnancy or birth. Wonderfully he survived to 35 weeks when they decided to induce me and he lived for an incredible 38 minutes once born. We named him Harry which means warrior - he fought for his life.

Leaving the hospital without your baby is one of the hardest things any parent has to face, and feeling as though you’re alone makes it even harder.

We are raising money in Harry’s name for some of the charities that have supported us.

We are so fortunate to have The Tigerlily Trust in our local area that support bereaved families. Val, the founder of the trust and a bereaved parent herself, has kindly supported us through our pregnancy with Harry and I am sure we will be making the most of the charity’s many resources in the future. The charity ensured we had a memory box at the hospital full of gifts to help us remember every detail of Harry. We would like to raise money for more memory boxes for parents to take home.

Celia, our bereavement Midwife from Royal Lancaster Infirmary, works hard to support bereaved parents in a number of ways. She ensures bereaved parents have their own room away from the labour ward, which is beautifully decorated and with everything we needed to feel at home there. She puts her own time and money into the room and facilities available and guided us through the weeks after Harry was born, taking us to register his birth and death and keeping us up to date with where he was during the post mortem. We want to raise money to keep the room well stocked with everything a new parent needs, as well as funding all Celia does outside her job description. We also hope that some of the money we raise will go to the new project of a “Rainbow Clinic” at RLI.

We are planning on doing a number of fundraising events. The first one will take place on 26th May and will be a 20 mile and 40 mile walk in the Lake District (To cater to all abilities!) If you would like to join us please email inharrysmemory@outlook.com

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Thank you for reading our story and supporting us. We are so grateful to everyone who is part of Harry‘s story xx