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London Marathon 2024
Charity Challenge
Ickle Pickle Clarabelle was born extremely prematurely last year. Her dad Ben told us that
“Ickle Pickles are a significant reason that Clarabelle is here with us today. They donate such critical equipment to neonatal departments which help save babies like Clarabelle's lives.”
Ben was due to run the London Marathon last year, but he deferred it to this year due to Clarabelle's unexpected birth and completed the race to raise funds for babies like Clarabelle at Winchester and Portsmouth Hospital.
Ickle Pickles Marathon runner Becki shared “I've always known the great work that neonatal units do for babies but this year I've had a few friends need to utilise these services first-hand.
It truly gives a different perspective. These units are responsible for saving the lives of so many children and through that, they impact thousands of lives each year.”
After running multiple marathons around the world, Becki ran the London Marathon for Ickle Pickles and raised over £1,000 for the Starlight neonatal unit at Barnet Hospital.
Dad Dennis won a ballot allocation for the London Marathon and selected Ickle Pickles to raise funds for premature and sick babies at St Helier Hospital. His twins Jax and River were born at 33 weeks and 3 days (just about 7 weeks early). Jax and River’s lives were in the hands of St Helier’s NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit).
Dennis says: “The care that our boys received was second to none - by the whole team from nurses to consultants. I would like to acknowledge and pay homage to St Heliers NICU.
In NICU we were overwhelmed by so much information regarding the boys' care and condition it was hard to keep up.
Jax and River were in incubators soon after they were born. They experienced acute twin transfusion syndrome that led to Jax taking more blood from River. This resulted in River needing a blood transfusion and Jax needing UV Light therapy to bring his red blood cell count down to normal levels.
For an extremely intense, stressful, transformational and challenging time of our lives, the St Helier NICU team made our introduction to parenting as digestible as possible.”
Thank you, Dennis, Becki and Ben for helping babies like Clarabelle, Jax and River. Thanks to your support, we can fund vital equipment to give every newborn a chance.
