Between Spring and Autumn 2022 it is my intention to run a series of long and extremely long-distance events to raise funds for the Miscarriage Association as well as raising awareness of baby loss in all its forms.

I have entered more events than I care to list, or you probably care to read but the ones which are particularly important in terms of my fund and awareness raising programme are:

Sunday 3rd April - Manchester Marathon – 26.2 miles
Saturday 7th May – The Pennine Barrier Ultra Marathon – 50 miles
Saturday 13th August – The Dalesway Ultra Marathon – 83 miles
Sunday 2nd October – The London Marathon – 26.2 miles
Saturday 15th October – Baby Loss Awareness Week Run – 100 miles

The following lines provide a bit of the backstory as to why I’m compelled to take on such a challenge. Unfortunately, it’s not the most cheerful of stories but it’s the only one I have to offer.

I married my wife Bex on a Summers day in 2015 which mostly went wrong! The wrong song played as she walked down the aisle, her wedding dress ripped, her dad toasted me and her sister at the end of the speech….and all that was before we’d eaten our starters at the reception. The day certainly didn’t unfold in the way a girl might envisage her wedding day unfolding. Undeterred from Bex’s big day from hell we decided to get straight on with trying to have a family. Things didn’t really happen for us very quickly or indeed at all for a few years.

Bex is one of the 1 in 10 women who suffer from endometriosis, a cause in its own right which should have a higher profile than it does in terms of awareness. Whilst we don’t know definitively the reasons why things were not working for us; we were told that her endo was likely a factor so after five years of trying, two laparoscopies, (a surgical procedure used to diagnose endometriosis and to destroy or remove the endometriosis, endometriotic cysts and release scar tissue (adhesions)), and after a lot of consideration we decided to take the plunge with IVF.

We began IVF in early 2020 the first embryo transfer, on the first round appeared to be successful. As the United Kingdom went into the first Covid Lockdown at the end of March 2020, Bex was three months pregnant, and we thought our luck had changed.

You probably might have guessed by now that the pregnancy didn’t go to plan. A couple of weeks later Bex was in A&E at Airedale General Hospital suffering what turned out to be the first of four miscarriages we would go on to experience before the country was out of Covid 19 restrictions.

Coincidently the anniversary of the due date (15/10/2020) of the first child we lost falls in Baby Loss Awareness Week. The day which I attempt to run over 100 miles would have been the child’s second birthday. 15th October 2020 also happens to be my nieces date of birth as my brothers partner gave birth to a baby girl on the day that our first child would have been due. A twist of fate which, I’m sure you can imagine, makes the dynamic in our family rather strange at times!

All four of the children we lost were between 6 and 14 weeks and we saw a heartbeat on the scans of every single one of them. Every miscarriage we went through was different in the way it came about. The one constant however was the lack of information at the end: how little science really understands in terms of what causes a miscarriage. Because of the lack of understanding, if you suffer from recurrent miscarriage and they run tests and find nothing, you simply in end up in a loop, which Einstein supposedly described as madness: You try the same thing repeatedly and expect a different outcome!

I think both Bex and I spent a long time wanting to speak out about our situation, but we never really knew how to go about it. For a long time, I couldn’t really talk to her about it. The stereotypical male trait of closing off and shutting down played out. I became snappy, short tempered and more distant than normal. The isolation of being in lockdown provided the perfect breeding ground for loneliness, anger, resentment, and self-pity. I certainly didn’t want anyone else’s pity. I had more than enough of my own.

There’s a ton of stats on the Miscarriage Association website which illustrate just how common our situation is. The pessimist in me suspects that due to the lack of impact miscarriage has on the economy it’s simply not seen as a priority in terms of funding. In England a woman isn’t even entitled to take the time off work to lose her child in the privacy of her own home, let alone grieve the loss. In fact, the government voted down a bill to enable this as recently as May 2021 and failed to take the opportunity to change the law through scheduled debates in the House of Commons as recently as 17th March 2022. I do wonder if the physical symptoms of miscarriage didn’t only happen to women, attitudes in the Palace of Westminster might be different?

The flip side of this coin however is the fact that from a male perspective this is a situation which happens to you. You have absolutely no control over anything. It’s difficult to relate to your partner or get your head around what they are going through as you simply don’t have a womb or any other point of reference. The only thing you can do is to be supportive; other than that, you are kind of a spectator. I think ultimately this is what broke me mentally and resulted in me having to take extended leave from work in Spring 2021.

By July 2021, through poor diet, lack of exercise and too much beer I found myself weighing in at 106kg (16 stone 10 in old money). I decided that I needed to turn things around and try and rediscover the positive outgoing person I was previously. I started running regularly, probably for the first time since my late teens. I remembered that I actually quite enjoy it and (dare I say) once upon a time I wasn’t bad at it either! From here on a seed of an idea was sown to try and channel my emotion to try and help other people going through loss similar to what Bex and I have experienced whilst helping myself at the same time.

Through ‘Marathons for Miscarriage’ I will run four races in memory of our four children who didn’t make it. The Manchester Marathon on 3rd April will be the first; the next three will then increase by roughly a marathon in length each time. The timing of the London Marathon fits perfectly to be my last training run before I make my attempt at breaking 100 miles. Strangely, the distance from my home to the Early Pregnancy Unit at Airedale Hospital is pretty much exactly a Half-Marathon, therefore I intend to run between the two; there and back; four times, once for each loss, on the 15th October.

Ultimately if the money I raise funds a single test which helps to move science the smallest step closer to being able to answer the endless of questions Bex, I and countless of other couples have relating to what is happening and why; or if it could fund counselling for a couple who have to go through a similar situation to ourselves; it will be worthwhile.

The pain and fatigue that an individual might go through during a run over a distance like the ones I, assuming I remain injury free; will run this year is probably what deters many. I’m confident that whatever struggle and suffering I experience during the challenges I have set myself will be small in comparison to the pain experienced due to baby loss. That said, the pain I and every other on looking partners suffers must be dwarfed in comparison to that of the thousands of brave women like Bex who endure the physical process of losing a child in addition.

The bleak reality is that 1 in 4 pregnancies end in loss (and they are only the reported ones) – this means that statically many of you reading this email will have also gone through a similar situation and if that is the case, I am truly sorry.