Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

I'm sure many of you who have known me for the over 12 years know why these charities mean so much to us, but for those who don't here is a little back story about us...

In May 2009 my seemingly perfect and healthy beautiful baby daughter was stillborn. Whilst it had been a difficult pregnancy for me we were constantly assured that our beautiful baby girl was growing strong.

Then at 36 weeks after a short episode of reduced movements we decided to go to the hospital "just to make sure" thinking that Winnie was just having a lazy day, When we arrived the midwife took our history and asked me to pop up onto the bed so she could listen to baby, She squeezed some jelly onto my belly and picked up a doppler probe, she placed it on my tummy and wriggled it around, the only pulse she could hear was mine, here we go again I thought, this had happened so many times, baby girl had been breech for a while so it had been tricky to always pick up her heartbeat on the first try.

But the midwife did not seem to relax, "I'll just get the sister to have a go then if this has happened before" she said. The sister came and the same thing happened again, "This machinery is not always the best way to check, we'll just pop you over to scan, its much more accurate over there"

When we walked into the scan room with the midwife there was two radiographers waiting for us which seemed unusual, we'd had so many scans for so many reasons but there had always only been one. I began to feel anxious, I willed our baby girl to give me a kick so that knew she was ok.

I laid on the table as Ben held my hand, a felt a wave a panic wash over me, the probe had been on just a bit too long for nobody to have spoken, for the little screen not to have been turned around. the radiographers and the midwife just stared at the screen, my chest tightened and I felt dizzy, sat bolt upright before anyone had even spoken, then softly spoken one of the radiographers said the two words that haunted me then and haunt me now "I'm sorry"

The next two days went by in a daze of sadness, despair and disbelief, my huge bump that I loved so much suddenly hidden under baggy jumpers and nighties, now a painful reminder of what had happened to my beautiful baby girl, I didn't want to look like I was pregnant, I didn't want to feel like I was pregnant, I just wanted to hold my baby girl in my arms and watch her grow up.

Family visited but I couldn't make sense of anything that was happening, everyone wanted to be there for me but there was nothing anybody could do. By now everyone close to us knew what had happened, my brave and wonderful sister Emma and Mum Therese had made the terrible phone calls to my friends and to the family, so now there was broken hearts scattered all around us. I felt like I was to blame for all of their pain, as the child you are not meant to see your mum and dad cry, yet I had broken their hearts. I couldn't eat or sleep, I didn't want to bath or shower because it meant looking at my beautiful bump, knowing that my darling girls heart was no longer beating.

I remember on the Thursday night everyone was in bed, I think Emma even slept on the floor in Mum and dads room for some of the nights between finding out what happened and Winnie's funeral just so that we were all together, anyway getting back to the Thursday night, lying awake whilst everyone slept and creeping into Elliott's room and sitting beside his bed holding his hand, and cradling my bump and crying, crying so much it hurt, and calling out like a child to see if anyone was a awake, calling out for comfort and love. Mum as always was the first one there, and she sat beside my and we cried together. We had both lost a a part of us, I had lost my little girl and hers would never be the same again.

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