A father of premature twins has raised almost £3,600 for children’s charity

A father of premature twins has raised almost £3,600 for The Sick Children’s Trust and Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (ACT) as thanks for keeping him by his baby daughter’s side when she needed lifesaving treatment.

Rob Block, 30 from Bury St Edmunds, and six friends completed the ‘Tough Mudder’, a gruelling 12 mile obstacle course, last month in Grantham to raise money for two charities close to his family’s hearts.

Twins Elodie and Felix were born six weeks early at West Suffolk Hospital. And before either Rob or his wife Roxanne had a chance to meet their newborns, doctors rushed the babies into the special care baby unit (SCBU) as both were struggling to breathe. Shortly afterwards, the worried couple were told that Elodie’s condition was critical and she needed an emergency transfer to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at The Rosie Hospital in Cambridge – over 35 miles away.

At just a few hours old, Elodie was separated from her twin and rushed to the specialist hospital, where she was diagnosed with a diaphragmatic hernia. At three days old she underwent lifesaving surgery, after doctors told her parents to prepare for the worst. Miraculously, Elodie survived and after spending a month recovering at The Rosie Hospital, she was transferred back to SCBU at West Suffolk Hospital. A few weeks later her proud parents took her home to re-join her brother Felix. Dad, Rob, who was cheered on during the race by his 21 month old twins, says:

“Completing the obstacle course was nothing compared to the trauma we experienced almost two years ago. We didn’t even get to see our babies after they were born, which is how we knew something was seriously wrong.”