My daughter Clara was born last year on 12th December, six weeks premature weighing just 3lb 1oz.

As she arrived into this world too soon and too small she was rushed straight to intensive care for special attention. The first days and weeks of her life were tough for all three of us. Poor Clara had wires attached all over her, had to be fed through a nasal tube and was in an incubator to control her body temperature. I can’t tell you how hard it is as a new parent not to be able to cuddle your new baby, especially seeing her so small and helpless.

Me and Cat spent pretty much every waking hour at the hospital, watching, waiting and willing her to grow. As the days and weeks went by Clara gradually grew stronger and after 28 of the hardest days of my life my beautiful daughter came home. In many ways we were lucky, Clara only spent four weeks on the special care unit and is now a happy healthy little girl with her whole life to look forward to. Some babies spend many months in special care and some will spend their whole lives there.

During Clara’s time in special care I became aware of Bliss the charity helping the families of babies that are born too soon, too sick or too small. Bliss do some amazing work offering support and advice to families throughout the UK and having been through it myself with Cat and Clara I’ve decided to give something back to them and raise money by running the London marathon.

This is the point where I should probably talk about how unfit I have been and the training I’ll have to do, but you know all that. All I’ll say is that this is a cause that means so much to me so  please give as much as you can.

Below is some information about what the money can do for Bliss.

Thank you so much for your support

Rob

• £10 provides crucial telephone support for a family through our helpline

• £25 buys a full set of information booklets for a family to help them understand their baby’s treatment and development

• £40 allows an overwhelmed parent to attend a counselling session with a Bliss-trained counsellor

• £100 provides essential training for a parent-to-parent volunteer

• £500 funds a Bliss parent support group for a whole year

• £1,000 provides a series of counselling sessions for four families who are really struggling to cope

• £2,500 helps fund a new campaign to recruit more specialist nurses for our most vulnerable babies

• £5,000 pays for a Bliss study day and support package for 50 health visitors on supporting premature and sick babies after discharge from hospital 

• £10,000 funds our family support helpline for over a month.