I’m really fortunate to be one of a very small number of people running with a ballot entry with no need to raise money - so I’m handing this over to Sarah and David to raise money for Little Stars who helped them so much when Arthur surprised us all by arriving early!

Over to Sarah ❤️….

Little Stars is the Frimley Park hospital neonatal charity that supports premature and poorly babies, together with their families. We experienced the incredible Neonatal unit first hand when our son Arthur was born at 32 weeks in July 2022. The staff do an incredible job not just looking after the babies, their primary patients, but caring for the family too.

The Little Stars charity is trying to fund ways to make the neonatal journey as comfortable, helpful and relaxing as possible. This may sound strange but there’s a lot to be said for sitting in a comfortable chair for hours on end next to your baby when you’ve just given birth. The team have introduced a video messaging technology to send parents videos of their babies when they are not there, this is particularly comforting during the nights or I imagine if you had other children and responsibilities at home that you needed to juggle. It’s also the little (big) things like paying for your daily parking; providing breast pumps and milk bottles for those mothers that want to try and breastfeed later and the endless supply of nappies and clothes for all of us caught off guard having our babies earlier and smaller than expected.

The charity needs further funds to continue to do everything they already do, plus purchase new beds, redecorate and improve their facilities.

It really means a lot to us that Jess is supporting this charity whilst accomplishing the feat of running the London Marathon. We wish her all the luck and good running vibes.

We hope that future families going through premature birth can at least have aspects of their journey as comfortable and supportive as possible with the help of Little Stars.

Please give what you can - it will make the hard miles much easier! Thank you