Gemma shares her story and race day experience with us :
“We nearly lost our son Albie to a group B Strep infection shortly after he was born. After a home birth, the visiting midwife spotted his breathing was quick the following day. Probably not wanting to worry us she calmly told us to go to A&E to get it checked out, we thought it was routine, that it would be a quick visit, but shortly after arriving, there were teams of about 20 people around us including resuscitation which was incredibly frightening. I was asked many questions about my pregnancy and family health history, and nothing was out of the ordinary to note. We had a painstaking five-hour wait until we could see him. A consultant said later when Albie was over the worst that she was in A&E when we arrived, and the team knew they had a sick baby on their hands but by the short time they got to NICU he was gravely ill. So, the long wait we had to see him was Albie fighting for his life.
We are so lucky he won the fight, but it’s devastating that many babies do not or end up with a life changing disability. Albie turned five this year and it seemed like a good milestone to do some more fundraising (I completed the GBSS 100 squats a day challenge in 2021).
Running doesn’t come that naturally to me and after over 9 years of not running any distance, 2 babies, and 2 heart operations later it was time to dust off my trainers! The Royal Parks half has always caught my attention as it sounded like such a lovely route – and it didn’t disappoint. The race day weather was on my side, hooray, the ridiculously long ques for the toilet ahead of the start were not (I missed my start time affecting my time, but I got round ok all the same). A highlight was seeing Albie and his brother Finn a couple of times on route.
I had a few doubts if I was able to do the half in the lead-up as illness took valuable training time out of what was quite a tight schedule, to begin with. But the motivation to support GBSS helped to quash the negative thoughts of not being able to do it, and I’m so glad I did as I’ve raised £1,355. I’m also over the moon with the awareness I’ve raised, shockingly many people I speak to have not heard of GBS. I pushed the message out via absolutely every avenue I could, you just never know who it might help in the future or what funds will come of it!”
If you’d like to show your support for Gemma, you can visit her JustGiving page here https://www.justgiving.com/page/gemma-stevenson-1725971661314
