We (Sarah, Sophie and Clare) will be running the Oxford Half Marathon in 2025 in memory of Sarah and Andy's firstborn son, Tate honouring what would be his 10th birthday.

Tate's Story

Tate was born via emergency C-section on October 16th 2015. He had an undiagnosed condition with his placenta called Vasa Previa, which meant that the placenta did not form correctly and had exposed blood vessels running along the outside. The condition is not routinely scanned for on the NHS and in undiagnosed cases has a 95% mortality rate.

When Sarah’s waters broke unexpectedly at 35+6 weeks, it caused the unprotected blood vessels to rupture, leading to catastrophic blood loss.

After his delivery, Tate was resuscitated for 11 minutes in theatre and given several blood transfusions. He was then taken to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in the John Radcliffe for cooling treatment to try to limit long-term brain damage.

Nothing prepares you for something to go wrong in the birth of your child. Our lives were changed in an instant, instead of getting excited to bring a healthy baby home. We were quite quickly faced with the grim reality that that wouldn't be the case.

SSNAP funds essential medical life-saving equipment, research, and support the amazing NHS staff on the neonatal unit with training and study days, to enable them to continue to provide the very best of care. They facilitated us being given a family room just near the unit so we could be close to Tate 24/7.

Tate lived on life support for 5 days whilst we navigated his condition, which sadly became worse. An MRI scan confirmed that he had suffered a brain injury called Hypoxic Ischaemic Encephalopathy (HIE) caused by a lack of oxygen due to the blood loss he experienced from the Vasa Previa. This type of injury is fatal in the most severe cases.

Tate died peacefully in our arms on October 21st 2015, and is a much-loved and missed member of our family.

We would love to raise as much money as possible for SSNAP in Tate’s memory 💙✨