On 13^th August 2016, after a fairly uneventful pregnancy, my wife went into labour with our son, nine days past his due date. Excitedly, I strapped the car seat into the car, put our bags in the boot and we were away. This was it, after waiting almost 42 weeks to meet him he was finally on his way!  

Once we were at the hospital, labour progressed slowly – two days of contractions, checks on his heart rate every 15 minutes and no sleep. We decided to move wards to try to push things along. Another routine check was carried out, however this time it was different. There was no heart-beat.  

I didn’t believe it, they must be wrong, the equipment isn’t working. Further checks were carried out, but they all had the same result. There’s moments in your life where you know things will never be the same again, this was one of them. My whole world felt like it had crashed down around me, all I could do was tell my wife it wasn’t her fault while at the same time telling myself that it was mine.  

17 more hours of labour, still clinging onto the hope that they’d all got it wrong, and finally, Jacob was born. He was the most perfect, beautiful thing I’d ever seen. But they hadn’t got it wrong. We had to leave the hospital without Jacob and drive home with the car seat still empty.  

In the weeks and months that followed, an investigation found that Jacob died because the placenta was failing. If this was picked up during the pregnancy, he would have been delivered sooner and he would likely still be alive.  

In doing our own research into stillbirth, we discovered Tommy's. Tommy’s is the largest UK charity researching the causes and prevention of premature birth, miscarriage,and stillbirth. Eight babies are stillborn every day in the UK; 60% of these are unexplained. Tommy's research and the accompanying changes to maternity care they have implemented have led to a 32% reduction in unexplained stillbirths in the Greater Manchester area (where their stillbirth research is based).  

In 2018 we found out we were having another baby. Exciting and terrifying in equal measure. We knew we needed the support of the Tommy's clinic to give our daughter the best chance. We had additional specialised monitoring, specifically on the placenta, which resulted in a birth plan that delivered our daughter completely healthy at 38 weeks. The maternity care provided by the Tommy's clinics are not standard practice, but they should be.   

There will always be a void in my life where Jacob should be. I don’t want any other family to have to go through the heartache of losing a child, and so I’m running the London marathon to raise vital funds in support of Tommy’s research to pick up issues in pregnancy and prevent babies from needlessly dying.

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