A letter to the Royal Women's Hospital Foundation

I've been on a letter writing campaign. In the early weeks after Max died I wrote many, many letters and cards of gratitude for the care and support we received, but then I kind of hit a wall with them, and I just didn't seem to have the energy anymore. There are still quite a few that I'd like to write and send, so I'm chipping away at them gradually. I'm posting them here so that I have a record of all the words I've sent out to the world in Max's name, which is so important to me.

This letter is to the Royal Women's Hospital Foundation, which supports the research and development arm of the hospital where Max was born. We raised a fair bit of money for them amongst our friends and families earlier this year, in Max's memory. I wanted to tell them why we did so. I wanted them to know that the research they enable makes a difference to people. I am attaching a photo of Max to the letter.

Here is the letter:

Dear Royal Women’s Hospital Foundation,

Recently we raised $5376 for your organisation through donations from ourselves, our families and our friends to an Everyday Hero fundraising page we set up. I wanted to share with you our gratitude for the life-saving research you do to help women and their babies, as well as the story behind why we chose your foundation as the recipient of our fundraising efforts.

Eight months and two days ago, on 24th November 2011, we had a beautiful baby boy at the Royal Women’s Hospital. We named him Maxwell (Max). He was the most perfect little baby you will ever have seen, but for some reason we don’t yet understand, we would not get to keep Max. He died only 6 hours after he was born due to the challenges he faced from being born extremely prematurely. Words cannot adequately describe the trauma, pain and sorrow we experienced on what should have been the happiest day of our lives - the day of our only child’s birth.

We say words cannot describe it, but we know that the people who work for your foundation must be able to imagine it, or else they wouldn’t work so tirelessly towards researching the potential causes of spontaneous preterm labour, such as I experienced that day, or towards its prevention or treatment. For that commitment we are grateful and so very humbled.

We would like to offer our heartfelt thanks to the Foundation and it’s researchers for the work you all do to make a difference to families like ours who have suffered the senseless loss of an otherwise perfect baby because we do not yet adequately understand the mechanisms that cause women to go into labour so early and unexpectedly.

The important work you enable does not stop with the researchers, however, but continues in the amazing care and compassion the amazing obstetricians and midwives at The Women’s provide. We have nothing but awe and praise for the care we experienced under very stressful, challenging circumstances. Thank you for everything you do to support and enhance their work, too. We can tell you, without doubt, that it truly does make a difference. It makes such a difference.

We will continue to support your research efforts in every way we can into the future, in honour of our darling son, who is so loved and so desperately missed.

With warmest wishes and the greatest respect,

Max's mum and dad.

From a dad's perspective

It is rare to get a glimpse into a father's perspective on a child who has died. Far too rare.

I was sent a link to this story by a friend today and I was so pleased to read it. Not pleased that this little baby died, of course, never that, but pleased his dad felt willing and able to share his perfect baby son with the world so that we can open more conversations about what is still a subject shrouded in so much secrecy and misinformation.

It is hard to do, to open yourself up to the world when you are at your most raw and wounded. It is even harder to share the story of your baby with an unknowing public when your first instinct is to protect your baby and yourself against potentially judging, misunderstanding eyes. 

So thank you, Michael, for sharing yourself, your beloved son Patrick, and your dear wife Pip with all of us. I am so sorry you have suffered such an unimaginable loss. You have done an important and necessary thing, and have helped others and kept your son's memory alive in doing so. I wish you all the very best with your fundraising efforts and in running the challenging City 2 Surf event in Sydney. You are an inspiration.

Incredibly, Michael has been able to raise over $21,000 for the Stillbirth Foundation. If you can help, you can find Michael's fundraising page here.

Max makes his mark

This week the Royal Women's Hospital sent us their latest publication, Our Stories. We had signed up to their mailing list when we donated to our fundraising campaign, In Memory of Max.

The hospital will always have a special place in our hearts. It is where Max lived his entire life - where we met him, and where we had to leave him behind.

We were delighted, therefore, when we noticed at the back of the magazine a list of new financial supporters for the hospital's work. There were many people donating money for research and services that might benefit our family, and others like ours, in the future.

We were even more delighted to discover that a great number of the new donors were listed because they donated money to our fundraising campaign, because of their connection to our Max. To see the names of so many people we know in print, recognising their contribution in honour of our baby, was so wonderful.

RWH's newest supporters -
so many of them are family and friends of our Max

We looked at this list and realised that Max's influence is still so strongly with us, and in fact that this was just the beginning of things that he will inspire us, and those who love us, to accomplish in his memory.

Thank you, once again, to every one who has been able to help us raise what is now $5306.05!

Our baby might never have had the chance to figure out his purpose in life, as we are all so privileged to be able to do, but he had a purpose as real as anyone's. His daddy and I will work hard to make sure we can discover, and act upon it, for him. We only hope that he looks upon us proudly, and is able to know how fortunate we feel to have known him and to call ourselves his parents.

1 Million Kilo Challenge: Final Update!

I am so happy to announce that Leslie and I have met, and in many cases actually exceeded, our goals in the 1 Million Kilo Challenge that we started all the way back in January.

We began the challenge as a way of raising money to aid research into preterm birth at the Royal Women's Hospital, where Max was born. The challenge was also a chance for us to make some positive changes to our lives, in the hope that we would gain fitness and strength to help us through what has been an immensely harrowing time.

Friends and family donated money to us after we pledged individual weight loss goals. Leslie pledged to lose 8kg and I pledged to lose 5kg.

I am so proud to say that Leslie exceeded his weight loss goal by 2kg, losing a whopping 10kg as a result of changes to his diet. He is looking so wonderful, and so handsome, and I know he is feeling the benefits in his energy levels, as well as pride in his achievements.

I only lost 2.5kg of my 5kg goal, however I believe I may have been a little ambitious in my goal-setting! I now weigh 54.4kg, which is slightly less than I did when I became pregnant with Max. Though I would have liked to reach 53kg, I am still pleased with the loss I achieved. Both Leslie and I will continue, unofficially, on the challenge, and will report in on our efforts to create healthier lives from time to time.

By far our biggest achievement, however, has been the astonishing sum of money we have raised, with the help of our family, friends, and networks, for the Royal Women's Hospital Foundation. We started with a goal of only $1000, which in itself felt like quite a challenge at the time. Soon, however, we'd met our target and we found ourselves moving our goal posts...to $2000, then $3000, then $4000, and then to a whopping $5000!

Not only did we meet our revised $5000 fundraising total, but we actually exceeded it! Our grand total at the end of the challenge was:

$5236.06

Wow!

We would both like to take this opportunity to thank our very generous friends, family and colleagues, who not only donated money in memory of Max, but some of whom then raised funds amongst their own networks to collect even more money (and lose even more weight!). 

Special heartfelt thanks go to Andrea, Kate, my Aunty Jill, her friend and colleague Catherine and my cousin Stephanie for their passionate and dedicated fundraising efforts. We could not be more grateful.

And our congratulations go to all those others who undertook the weight loss challenge with us, including my cousin Kristy, who lost a signifiant amount of weight in her own right, despite having just given birth to her own baby a short time beforehand.

We could not be prouder of you all.

As if that is not enough, at the end of the challenge, In Memory of Max was still the top fundraising team from the whole event!

Top 10 Fundraising Teams at the end of the challenge

The raising of these funds has been the first thing we have been able to achieve, as Max's parents, to honour him. We want to make sure that his life and his memory brings as much light to the world as he brought to ours. Though we do not yet know what our future holds without him, we know that we will always strive to do good things in his name, and to be better people in his honour. 

Thank you, everyone, for helping us start that legacy. It means so much to us that Max meant something to each of you.