Our story began on Wednesday 10th January 2018, it was the day of our 12 weeks scan we eagerly arrived at Warrington Hospital with our two other children, Harry & Sophia. Upon entering the waiting room, we gave our details at the reception desk and was told to take a seat, we noticed we had to buy a stamp from a vending machine to purchase a scan picture which we did. We heard our names shouted so we entered the room, mum lied on the bed and the sonographer began to scan, a couple of minutes in we were told something didn’t appear quite right and in fact our baby had no head and that our baby wasn’t going to survive, we were walked into a private room both distraught and the kids not knowing what was going on. After some time, we went home and researched the diagnosis, exencephaly, what was it? Would our baby survive? Was it a mistake? No! the more we looked the more we knew our baby wouldn’t survive we connected with other people all over the world, their babies had all died!
Our Story
We made the decision that we would not accept a medical termination and instead we would continue the pregnancy and allow him or her to close their eyes when he or she was ready to do so, we continued to go for scans and found out at our 24 week scan we was having a little girl, we named her Ava-Marie Grace Thompson.
Throughout the pregnancy we accepted care packages from America, fundraised almost 2k on a special cuddle cot, was in local and national media and thought of ways we would leave a legacy for our daughter.
Ava-Marie was born on the 11th July 2018 at 10.28 weighing 4lb 10.5oz, she was baptised at a couple of hours old and brought her home at 2 days old. We spent 11 wonderful days making memories before Ava-Marie fell asleep one last time on the 22nd July 2018 at 9.15am.
Ava-Marie was carried by horse and carriage to the crematorium on the 31st July 2018, her daddy made a promise to her on that day, a promise to keep her legacy alive, that’s when the Ava Marie Foundation was born.
