Susan Runs For Sands

My husband and I have 4 children, unfortunately 2 of them are wee angels. Our son Tim arrived in 2016 after a pregnancy of 21 weeks and our daughter Sophie arrived in 2018 with 18 weeks. Holding your baby in your arms, knowing that it will never breathe, never laugh, never walk and never talk has been one of the hardest things in our lives.

After I gave birth to Tim we got in contact with Sands. Sands is a network of parent-run, non-profit groups supporting families who have experienced the death of a baby.

Sands promotes awareness, understanding and support for those dealing with the death of a baby at any stage in pregnancy, birth or as a newborn, and due to medical termination or other forms of baby loss.

We found out that they were responsible for making up the memory boxes we received for both children and they provided us with information about how to tell our 2 other children what had happened to their wee brother and sister.

Sands helped us a lot and that's why I want to help them now.

After Sophie was born I started running. First just only short distances, but I slowly started to increase and at the moment I'm able to run 12 km. Running has becoming a bit of therapy for me. So I decided to raise funds for Sands by running half a marathon, 21 km. This is going to happen on the 3rd of March in Christchurch.

The raised funds will be used for their volunteers training and cover their website costs to continue to provide a very useful resourceful site that is up to date for bereaved families to access nationwide.

I would be very grateful if you would like to sponsor me, every dollar counts!