See www.justgiving.com/fundraising/austinsraffleandlunch for details and payments for the raffle and event on 19th November.

During what had been a lovely pregnancy, at our 20 week scan at Royal Derby Hospital, we discovered that our baby had extreme shortening and bowing of all of the long bones, in keeping with ‘Lethal Skeletal Dysplasia’.  This diagnosis meant our baby was likely to die in the antenatal or very shortly after birth.  Therefore, we made the very difficult decision to give birth to baby.  After a 36hour labour, Austin was still born on Monday 10th July at 17:37 at 21weeks+4days gestation.  It was the worst day of our lives but we held Austin, dressed him and talked to him most of the night/morning, telling him everything he had done whilst he was developing.

The midwives were all absolutely fantastic and everything supplied by Sands/Derby Sands was so special and means so much.   The Butterfly suite was great, separate from the rest of the labour ward and with its very own garden and a reclining arm chair for Daddy.  The memory box from Sands had tiny knitted clothes and beautiful blankets for us to wrap him in, teddy bears (one stayed with Austin and we brought one home, which really helps in dark times), a candle with the words "Even the smallest of feet have the power to leave every lasting footprints upon this world" and leaflets with lots of important information.  The midwife took photographs of us with Austin, and gave the memory card to us so we could print out the photos, which we treasure.  She also took his hand and foot prints which are very special and we are having tattooed so he will always be with us.  There is a butterfly memorial garden in Derby which we have applied to have Austin named in.

Sands provide a lot of support to anybody who has been affected by the death of a baby and promote research to reduce the loss of babies lives.  The memory box and support they have provided has been invaluable to us and we want to raise money for them to ensure they can continue the good work they do.

Huge support has been given to us by Smalley Road Runners (local running club we are members of who meet on Tuesdays and Thursday at 7pm at Heanor Conservative Club) and Alex Robinson (Personal Training based Marehay and holds boxing classes on Tuesdays, (Little Eaton), Wednesdays (Milford) and Thursdays (Ripley) all at 730pm) who is also running the New York Marathon on 5th November for Sands - please donate on this page to sponsor her!  Thanks for everything our friends, family and colleagues have done for us to help us with our butterfly.

We will be running the Mathew Walker Pudding Run on Sunday 19th November (Austin's original due date was Thursday 16th November) 10am at Shipley Park, and ask friends to join us to jog/run/spectate.  Please help us raise money for Sands and sponsor us.

Thank you for everything, love Haych and Mark xxx