Each year, over 20,000 expectant parents a year are told that their baby may have a genetic or structural condition. ARC is the only national charity to provide non-directive information and support to parents, whatever decision is made about the future of the pregnancy.

Thanks for visiting my just giving page,

Let me tell you about my story and why I am completing the 2022 London Marathon for Antenatal Results and Choices (ARC) and would love your support to reach my fundraising target!

11th November 2019, the day that should have been a routine 12week baby scan (exactly the same as our first pregnancy), the day I felt pain like no other as We realised or baby was poorly beyond words and our rollercoaster ride was just about to begin. The days after came round in a blur of the unknown, the questions, the self blame, the why us.. we were directed by our amazing midwife Sarah from fetal med to access to 24/7 support of ARC. 

ARC our saviour in the dark of night whilst trying to navigate our way through finding out what was wrong - what do screening tests test for, why are they important, what does this mean what does that mean - what do we do if it’s this, what do we do once we find out that, endless! 

Days passed, extra scans, tests and the CVS procedure happened without a second to think about it but due to the information we were able to access through ARC, we felt as prepared as we could be, we understood as much as we needed too for us to get through this thanks to ARC - when we found out that our beautiful baby girl had trisomy 13 also known as Patau’s - with a low rate of survival - we accessed the forums set up by parents  in a similar situation to us which helped us to navigate the choices we had to make, on Wednesday 20th November 2019 we had our daughter Erin, born sleeping - forever our first baby girl! 

Since Erin, we have welcomed the arrival of our littlest beautiful daughter  - with the support we knew we could access from ARC we navigated our pregnancy with confidence, the conversations about Amniocentesis, CVS and the screening was terminology we understood, the reasons why these procedures were important weren’t as distressing - full of anxiety .. yes but not as distressing!!

As always there is much more to my story than I’ve written above - I’m running the London Marathon for my story, for my beautiful family, for ARC, and mostly for my beautiful angel baby Erin, who left us far too soon!