After taking 4 years to conceive, along with a miscarriage and a failed IVF last year; the day my partner Steve and I found out we were pregnant with Baby Fraser was the happiest of our lives to date.

Yet after a low risk and straightforward pregnancy, our precious son's heartbeat stopped in the final minutes of labour, on the 1 August 2013, during an emergency c section. We never, for one moment, contemplated going home without him. It has devastated us and our family and friends.

We have had amazing support from St. Mary's Maternity Hospital in Poole, our GP practice and SPRING (Supporting Parents and Relatives In Neonatal Grief), a charity set up to help those like us who have experienced the death of a baby during pregnancy, at, or just after birth. This includes miscarriage, stillbirth and termination for foetal abnormality. SPRING supports in a number of ways, through counselling, befriending and during a subsequent pregnancy.

In the immediate days following we were given the time and space to create some very special memories with Baby Fraser in a private suite away from the post-natal ward. We have had invaluable emotional support from a dedicated and lovely bereavement midwife, who is a lifeline for us, and we have also had help organising the funeral. Everyone we have come in to contact with over the past few weeks has been full of compassion, concern and care.

Before Fraser came along, the thought of going through life without a baby felt like a huge hole in our hearts. Despite everything that has happened, we have filled that hole; even if the one we have now is wider, deeper and Fraser shaped.

So we'd like to ask for your support in raising money for the charity that is helping us through our darkest days. We have an initial target of £4000 in mind as this is how much it costs for a temperature mat, which allowed us to keep Fraser with us for the two days we were in the private suite.

 

Over the coming months we will be taking part in, and organising, a number of fundraising events; starting with the Boscombe 10k race in Bournemouth on November 24th.

 

Thank you for all your love, support, care and kindness.

 

Sarah and Steve xx