The Pink Mile
After losing our firstborn daughter, Serenity, to stillbirth at 38 weeks gestation, Jodie and I began raising funds to supply a cold-cot for our local hospital.
I also began writing poems to help understand and explain his thoughts and feelings. 11 months later we were both ready to have their rainbow baby, Trinity, who they had learned had a complex heart condition.
After several long stays in hospital, visited many places and family members and enjoying a short family holiday at Pontins, Trinity suffered a cardiac arrest while visiting family in Wales.
Trinity was 5 months and 1 day of age. A short while later Jodie and I had the opportunity to attend the butterfly awards. Meeting so many inspirational people inspired them both to start their own charity and try to help others in their situation.
We both decided to name the charity after the very first poem I wrote while we were awaiting the stillbirth of Serenity.
The Pink Mile has now been setup and is working to raise money to provide memory boxes for families of child loss.
We are also hoping to provide more cold-cots this is our first one we manage to donate
and eventually provide a service to hire out cold-cots free of charge to families that wish to take their babies home for a short period, or as a last thing before their funerals. Also their new website is being built up as a central webhub of knowledge about pregnancy and infant loss and all the support organisations that are available.
The hope of this website will be that instead of flooding parents heads with information while they are still in shock, they can provide a simple web link and let the families discover the information they need at a time that they are ready for it.
Currently The Pink Mile are also involved with a few other charities and organisations helping to provide support and introduce new support services both locally and nationally.
Recently The Pink Mile put on their first ever event, a family fun day, where they were blown away with the response.
The fun day managed to raise just over £1,000. That coupled with the other channels of fundraising brings them to just over £2,000 in their first 3 months.
Our aim for our first year is to reach £5,000 to be eligible to become a registered charity. There are plans for more events which include quiz nights and even some adult entertainment evenings, as well as more child orientated fun days.
For more information you can visit our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/thepinkmile
Our website: www.thepinkmile.org.uk
by dad Matthew McAtamney-Greenwood
Our Breaking the Silence Video
Our poem by Matthew
To support the pink mile, Matthew poem book is now on Amazon, see link here https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B01FC26OIC/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1470351814&sr=8-3&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=the%20pink%20mile&dpPl=1&dpID=418LxJdJrFL&ref=plSrch
