On the 15th October we, like many others, will be taking part in the Memory Walk to mark the end of Baby Loss Awareness Week. This is an event organised by the Miscarriage Association, where participants will walk 4 miles at 4pm on a route of their choosing to represent the fact that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage.

As some of you know, a few months ago our first pregnancy ended in miscarriage, which was devastating for us. Our experience of this was incredibly traumatic, both emotionally and physically, and we sought comfort through educating ourselves on the topic and through reflection on what had happened. Two charities were of particular and equal support during this time, Miscarriage Association and SiMBA.

What made our experience feel extra distressing was a lack of guidance and misinformation. This is where we turned to doing our own research, and found The Miscarriage Association's website which helped us to understand our experience and gave us the small comfort of knowing that we weren't alone in what we were going through.

Our miscarriage was a noncontinuous pregnancy, or a 'missed miscarriage ' (essentially we found out during a scan that our little bean had stopped growing at 5 weeks when it should have been 9 weeks). Dependent on circumstances, this can put you into a state of limbo as you have the knowledge of the pregnancy being over but still waiting for it to pass. A memory box was provided to us at this appointment from the charity SiMBA, which gave us an outlet for our grief, for a circumstance where there was really nothing much 'physical' to grieve.

Now a few months on, and part-way down our road of recovery, we would like to channel some of our energy towards raising money and awareness for these services that helped us navigate our way through a truly awful time in our lives.

We will be walking 8 miles on the 15th October, 4 in support of Miscarriage Association and 4 in support of SiMBA, around and about our sunny (or rainy!) Dundee and with our wee Merlin in tow. As part of this, we are asking anyone who can support us in our Memory Walk to consider donating to one of these fantastic charities! We feel we received equal support from each charity, and so would love for the total of donations for each charity to be as close to equal as possible.

Thanks for reading our story - Annabelle, Callum and in memory of our little bean x