January 2018, my partner and I joined the 1 in 4 expectant parents who suffer the loss of a baby. Docs told me I could never father a child, so on Xmas day 2017 (when we decided to tell our families) it was the most magical Xmas ever had together.

The weeks after the miscarriage saw my Sarah with the most physical pain she’d ever experienced which was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to watch. We felt like we were alone and the only ones in the world left to our own devices. An emotional drain of extremity. The day of our miscarriage was the same day I announced the soft launch of a new music venue in Chelmsford I’d been working on called HIDEAWAYS. It went live on BBC News and that evening found myself torn between dealing with BBC live and a girlfriend who was losing our baby and had to leave. I wished I had gone with her.

I lost all willingness to work, face people, deal with every day normal tasks. I was making mistakes, losing customers and losing money and I couldn’t say a thing. I went into a dark place, and things started to get serious so I had to seek help. In April 2018 my Sarah went to an event hosted by the amazing Gemma Francis from “The Big Sing” in aid of the charity “Saying Goodbye” by Zoe Clark-Coates They help support couples and families just like us. It made us realise the problem is much greater than we realised, and we finally started to get closure. We planted a tree in memory of our baby and held our own ceremony which really helped the grieving process. That is now the place we go to to remember our baba.

I just want to say thank you so much to everyone that supported us. I know everyone goes through tough times and honestly don’t know where I would be right now if we didn’t have the support we were given. It is estimated 250,000 babies are lost each year in the UK through miscarriage, 4,000 through still birth and more in infancy, so the scale of the problem is massive. For the first time AT Music Group has set up an affiliation with a charity and “Saying Goodbye” is our chosen charity. Please help donate to this amazing charity. If you can only afford 10p, its 10p to show your thinking about it.

Thank you thank you thank you

Marc

Managing Director