Fundraising for Sands in our baby boy Leo's memory and in memory of his wonderful Grandma Judith Hill, who had wanted to raise money in his name xxx

Leo's story: On 15 January 2016 (our baby's due date) we went to the hospital for our routine 40 week appointment. The midwife did the usual checks, we heard the baby's heartbeat and we were told that baby was fine and to go home and wait for our precious little one's arrival, as it wouldn't be too long now. Waking up the next morning, thing's instantly just didn't feel quite right, and when we decided that our usually very active bubba was not responding to us in the normal way and wasn't offering us their playful kicks, we headed straight to the hospital to get checked out. A midwife took us in quickly and tried to find a heartbeat. Unsuccessful, she reassured us that it was probably just her and took us to be scanned by a doctor. The doctor then confirmed our worst fear; that our long awaited, incredibly adored baby, who we had loved, cared for and cherished for 9 months, had died. And then began the most challenging 35 hours as we were heavily induced and went through the pains of labour and natural delivery, all the time knowing that we would not hear our beloved baby cry at birth and that they wouldn't be coming home with us.

On Sunday 17 January 2016 at 8.50pm our beautiful baby boy, Leo Fitzgerald, was born silently sleeping. He was absolutely perfect, a healthy 8lb 7oz fullterm baby, ready to meet the world and without a trace of anything being wrong with him, except that he was badly tangled up in his umbilical cord. We later learned that his umbilical cord, his lifeline within the womb, had been tangled to a very unusual level, causing him to tragically and quietly pass without us knowing. 

It is now six years since we met, held and kissed our gorgeous first son, since we fell hopelessly even more in love with him and then had to devastatingly say goodbye to him, leaving him at the hospital and going home empty armed. It has been the toughest and saddest time we could imagine but our amazing boy Leo has taught us more about the world than we think we could have ever taught him. And throughout all of the pain and the tears, the overriding feeling has always been love. He will always be our brave, beautiful son, our precious first born, our amazing baby boy who first made us parents and we will forever be grateful for the short time that we all had together. We will continually try and make him as proud of us as we are of him. 

Thanks for your support. All our love, Jem, Tom and family xxxx

Unfortunately stillbirth is not a rare tragedy: in the UK in 2013, one in every 216 births was a stillbirth. This is around 10 babies a day.

Three in every ten stillbirths happen at term (after 37 weeks gestation), the age when a baby is preparing to start life outside the womb. Many of these lives could be saved with improvements both to care and to our understanding of why babies die and how to protect them

Sands is the stillbirth and neonatal death charity who operate throughout the UK, supporting anyone affected by the death of a baby, working to improve the care bereaved parents receive, and promoting research to reduce the loss of babies’ lives.