I am honoured to be asked by my cousin Beth to raise money and awareness for Aching Arms in memory of her son Zack Ansell, born 10/5/23. She would love to take part in a charity run herself but after giving birth, Beth became seriously poorly with sepsis and as a result, now has chronic kidney disease which has limited her ability to run.

I will be running 10 marathons in 10 conservative days and hope that you will join me in showing your support to this amazing charity who gives its comfort bears to hospitals and hospices, for midwives and nurses to offer to bereaved parents in their care. Along with the bears, they also offer a support service to parents after their loss, whether it was during pregnancy, at birth or soon after.

If you'd like to see a bit more about this charity, please read below -

As well as giving out our bears through our health professional partners, we donate bears to other organisations who support families after baby loss at any stage of pregnancy. We currently work with over 190 hospitals in the UK, as well as an increasing number of hospices, support groups and funeral directors. We also send bears to families who contact us to request one.

In the UK, around 3,000 babies are stillborn each year and thousands more parents experience early and late miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, termination for medical reasons, neonatal death and loss through separation from their baby. There are an enormous number of families affected by the loss of a baby and others who face infertility after a loss, and/or loss after successful fertility treatment. Aching Arms, which began as a small grassroots charity, has seen demand for its service double in the last 12 months. Last year we donated over 5,000 bears to bereaved families.

Aching Arms has recently extended it services and now offers direct support to parents via our Supporting Arms support service, a telephone and email support service which is run by bereaved parents. The service offers families the chance to talk to someone who has an understanding of what they’re going through and helps them feel they’re not alone. For further details of the service please visit the Supporting Arms page.

Aching Arms is raising awareness of the impact of pregnancy and baby loss and we work hard with other organisations and groups to increase understanding of the life changing and long-term effect of baby loss. We are very active in advocating improvement in bereavement care in both health settings and the workplace. To this end, the charity has developed and runs training for health professionals, employers and people managers. If you are interested in learning more about our workplace training, please take a look at our Workplace Bereavement Training page.