Team Daisy: Taking on 100k of hills for baby loss awareness
No amount of pain on the trails can equal that felt by bereaved parents
This weekend, I’m going to be in the metaphorical ‘world of pain’.
Somewhere on what is, hopefully, a 109km (68mile) run, walk, crawl round the outside of the Isle of Wight, my legs will doubtless be screaming at me to stop.
My joints will ache, my heart will quake at the approach of yet another hill, my mind will scream at me to stop.
A. World. Of. Pain.
Except it won’t be really.
A world of pain is what it must feel like when the child you’ve already learnt to love through months of pregnancy is taken from you just minutes after they are born.
A world of pain is suffering a miscarriage or being told the fertility treatment you’ve undertaken hasn’t worked again.
A world of pain is facing those things and then being told your next appointment at the hospital will be in the maternity unit, where you will be surrounded by bonny babies and happy young couples just when your own heart is breaking.
It is a desire to end scenarios like that which led to Wayne Chalmers starting Team Daisy, the charity Michelle and I will be running for this weekend when we attempt to take on the formidable Isle of Wight Challenge.
Wayne started Team Daisy shortly after his daughter, Daisy, sadly passed away just an hour after being born in 2018.
Since then, the charity has raised thousands of pounds for a variety of causes, but increasing awareness of baby loss has always been at the centre of the cause.
In recent years, Team Daisy has been supporting efforts to build a new bereavement suite at Northampton Hospital - a unit which would prevent scenarios like those outlined above from happening.
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The suite, which will cost around £150,000, was given planning permission in 2022.
Last year, Wayne and a group of supporters raised more than £11,000 by completing the Isle of Wight Challenge.
At 8am on Saturday, 21 of us will set out into the breach once more.
So, maybe, spare a thought or two for us as we battle through the British weather, climb up relentless hill after relentless hill, and slog onwards for hours on end.
But - even better - save them for those who have suffered the genuine pain of baby loss.
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