Holly Concannon

Why I’m running for SANDS 🤍

I never thought I’d be writing this, but this Baby Loss Awareness Week I’ve signed up to do the SANDS Ribbon Run in memory of our baby.

Earlier this year, we found out we were expecting another baby. We were so happy and so excited. We had already started imagining what life would be like with another little one, and getting to see Saylor become a big sister. It felt like a little dream come true.

At around 7 weeks, we went for a scan and saw our baby’s heartbeat. After a few more scans over the following 2 weeks, we were told that our baby had stopped growing and that their heartbeat had stopped.

As painful as it was, and as much as seeing that heartbeat made everything feel so much more real, I’ll always be grateful that I got to see our baby’s amazing little heart beating inside of me.

What followed was an incredibly difficult few months. I was very poorly for a long time and spent so much time going backwards and forwards to hospital. Eventually, I severely haemorrhaged and had to have emergency surgery. That will probably always be the scariest day of my life.

When we left the hospital the day we found out we had lost our baby, we were given a bear in memory of them. That bear has become so special to us. Saylor named it Blue, and she hasn’t slept a single night without it since the day we lost our baby.

For now, it’s just her special bear that she absolutely adores. But when she’s old enough, I’ll tell her what that bear represents and how special it is that she’s always had that little connection to her brother or sister.

This is the sort of thing SANDS does — helping make the hardest moments just a little less lonely.

That’s why I wanted to do the SANDS Ribbon Run.

I wanted to do something in memory of our baby, but also raise money for a charity that supports other families who have had to experience the same kind of loss.

I’ll be running for our baby, Blue, and for every baby who is loved and missed but never got to come home.

If you’d like to sponsor me, I’d be so grateful. Every donation will help SANDS continue to support families through what can be an incredibly lonely and heartbreaking experience.

This run is for our baby, Blue.

Always loved. Always missed. Never forgotten. 🤍