Jamie’s Marathon

If you want to know the reason why Jamie Hill is running this marathon, you don’t need to look any further than the picture of his daughter Amy, who was born prematurely on February 12, 2013 at the tender weight of five pounds.

Amy Hill

Jamie Hill’s children – George, Annabel and Amy – were all born prematurely because his wife Rachel had a condition called ICP. Now Jamie is running his first-ever marathon on behalf of the charity ICP Support to try to make sure that other families don’t go through what the Hills did. Or worse, because in severe cases ICP can cause stillbirth.

Amy was a strong baby and despite her low birth weight she didn’t need any help from the special baby unit for breathing. But her brother George, now 15, was born at just 30 weeks and needed to be in the unit for three months.

The middle child, Annabel, born in 2007, was also born prematurely, but like her sister she was strong enough to not need to go into care.

For Jamie, there is one reason that he and Rachel now have their three beautiful healthy children, and that is the charity ICP Support.

Rachel suffered from a condition called intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy (ICP), which is a liver condition that affects 5,500 women each year in the UK. It makes the woman itch uncontrollably and carries with it an increased risk of premature birth. In severe cases in can result in still birth.

Says Jamie: ‘ICP Support, founded by Jenny Chambers after she lost two daughters to ICP, helped Rachel and me through all three pregnancies. Without the charity, there’s a chance that our three children might not be here today, and I will be forever grateful for the charity’s help. But like every charity it can only survive by raising money to provide support and to help fund the much-needed research into the condition’.

So that’s why Jamie is running the marathon this October – to give something back to the people who helped him and to help others who are going through what he and his family went through. If you’d like to support him in his efforts on behalf of ICP Support, you can sponsor him at www.justgiving.com/fundraising/james-hill36.