On Sunday (2nd Feb) it's Two's Day!

Three years ago, on 2/2/22, our youngest daughter Ailsa underwent open heart surgery. She was 4 months old.

Ailsa was diagnosed at birth with Trisomy-21 or Down's Syndrome (DS). DS is a genetic condition whereby Ailsa has an extra copy of chromosome 21. Around 50% of babies (1 in 2!) with DS will be born with a heart condition. Ailsa had atrial and ventricular septal defects i.e. holes in the upper and lower chambers of the heart. Surgery was needed to close these.

Children with DS will have some level of learning disability and are more likely to have a range of other health conditions. As with any child, it's impossible to know what their life will be like from the outset!

I'm therefore hoping to raise money for Shine21. They're a fantastic local charity who support children with DS and their families. This includes speech and language therapy, support developing fine motor skills, physiotherapy and Makaton (baby sign language) lessons to help children reach their full potential. These are resources that are either not available or not available with sufficient frequency on the NHS. As a family we are so grateful for the support they give Ailsa on a weekly basis and can see a huge impact on her development and communication.

Last year we were so grateful for everyone's donation that we're hoping to repeat again this year and to further encourage people to donate I've agreed to run 140km!

Most people would (rightly) say that I can't run 140km, so to make it a bit more manageable I'll be doing 5k per day, everyday. Hopefully this provides plenty of opportunity for updates, complaining and shameless reminders to donate to a very good cause.