British Baby Box is delighted to be promoting "Supporting Cancer and Pregnancy Awareness Week".
Mummy’s Star is the only charity in the UK and Ireland dedicated to supporting women and their families when the mother is diagnosed cancer during pregnancy or shortly after a birth.
Louise Harlow explains….."Cancer and Pregnancy Awareness Week is an opportunity for us to share the experiences of our women and their families, celebrate our achievements and reach new families who need our help. Since launching in 2013, we have been privileged to support over 900 women and their families. However, we know cancer in and around pregnancy affects 2 women every day and we want to be able to offer support to everyone who needs us. Although we can’t get out and about as we usually would this week, our message is that we are still here!".
The COVID-19 outbreak has created much anxiety and uncertainty amongst the many families we support and for those that will soon need to reach out to us. Many are in the highest-risk group, their immune systems already compromised from chemotherapy, feeling uncertain, vulnerable and struggling to manage the fear and anxiety alongside raising a young family.
Rachel is one of the Mum’s we support, she was diagnosed with Breast cancer when her son was just 8 months old.
“Lockdown happened just as I had started to recover from surgery. After 7 months of treatment I’ve focused on being able to start doing normal things again with my little boy. Although I’m so grateful my treatment is finished, I do feel a little cheated that our family has yet more restrictions after everything we’ve already been through.
Once treatment is over you really need your family and friends to lean on, mentally losing the safety net of active treatment is really hard.”
Much of our support service is virtual and our team is home based, so the interruption to our day-to-day activities has thankfully been minimal. It is paramount however, that we can continue to provide the help in reducing the isolation, fears and concerns families face. Our support workers and online community are a huge part of that support as it provides our families with direct contact for important information and a safe, secure and understanding space to talk.
Sarah explains…“I was diagnosed with breast cancer at 5wks pregnant and had a mastectomy at 13 weeks. I am due to have a little girl this week and will then start chemo 6 weeks later. I feel lucky because the mastectomy results showed all the cancer was taken out but I still have to have chemo to be sure it won’t come back and they get any stray cancer cells.
I also have 2 boys aged 5 and 7 who are very excited to meet their new sister soon!”
We are delighted to support Mummy’s Star and have donated one of our beautiful Adorable Baby Boxes to a Star baby born during Cancer and Pregnancy Awareness week 2020! We hope that together we can make life just that little bit easier for those who need us.