Dawn Ferguson, wife of club Opposition Analyst/Player Scout Andy Ferguson, is running the Stirling Half Marathon this weekend in aid of “Borne” – a medical research charity on a mission to end premature birth.

Read Dawn’s story below:

“On August 8th 2018, at 30 weeks pregnant, I went in to sudden labour with no warning signs at all.

We only had enough time to get to the hospital (around 20mins) and our son arrived. He was worked on immediately and taken to NICU.

Little did we know our journey had just begun. Gabriel was taken to the intensive care unit where he would spend weeks hooked up to life saving machines, we were catapulted into a world we knew nothing about. He suffered a bleed on his brain, a heart defect and required c pap to enable him to breathe.

Days passed before we could hold our son. There are currently no facilities for families to stay overnight with their premature babies. Each night for 6 long weeks we had to walk away and leave our precious boy in hospital. Each night we would walk down the corridor then back again to get one last look through the window of the doors to have “one last check” on his machines that they weren’t alarming. Each night we feared it would be the last… The sounds of the machines still haunt my sleep and can be a trigger for us both in different situations still.

Every single day of my life over 2 years on from his birth I run through the day in my head questioning what I did wrong and why, why this happened to me, to us and to Gabriel. Why us? There has to be a reason.

My placenta was analysed and a year later I received a letter saying. Nothing was wrong with it and the premature labour was simply “unexplained”.

I was treated for PTSD in all stemming from the experience of having a premature baby and still have after affects of trauma.

Gabriel now 3 years old still has ongoing appointments and meetings with various specialists, consultants and paediatricians at FVRI. 

15 million children are born too early every year…One million babies die. Borne are working hard to research into preventing this happening. 

I think you’ll agree this is an amazing charity working so hard to stop families experiencing this heart ache.

The truth is you never know when premature birth will affect your life or someone you love.  Premature births affect 1 on 13 babies in the uk. Please donate what you can.”

If you’d like to donate to Dawn’s fundraising efforts in aid of Borne, you can do so on the following link –

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/dawn-ferguson8818

From everyone at Livingston FC, we wish you the very best of luck Dawn and a huge well done for raising so much money for such a brilliant cause!

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