On Monday 9th December, around 5.00pm, I made my first approach to SSNAP regarding the project discussed in the first blog post – for ‘9 months, my arse’.
See below for the contents:
EMAIL START
Hi Caz and Christine,
First of all, I want to say thank you from both myself and my partner, Gemma Willis, for all the support you gave us during our time in the Neonatal Care unit, John Radcliffe Hospital, with our baby boy, Elijah-James Rose – who came into the world at 23 weeks and 4 days. Words do not do justice for the help and care you provided.
We were with you for 8 days, arriving in the afternoon, Sunday 15th September, and left on Tuesday 24th September, after Elijah passed away earlier that morning.
Since returning to Bournemouth, we have both started working and I have returned for my third year at university, and will be coming back to Oxford, to the hospital and unit, for a follow-up meeting regarding Gemma’s pregnancy (Thursday 12th December).
In this time, I have also started writing a book: ‘9 months, my arse’. The plan is to divide the book into three: 1) mine and Gemma’s story spanning from Elijah’s birth to death, 2) the aftermath and the grief, and 3) features from other people involved in the story and/or features from people with similar stories.
The aim with the book is to create awareness for the reality that babies can enter the word extremely premature, that more people have experienced the loss of a baby than the media/life/people realise, and to raise awareness and money for your charity. With the book written by myself, the male’s POV will most likely be prominent too – thus, raising awareness for the male’s POV during pregnancy and/or the loss of a child.
With this in mind, I am emailing you to ask whether you, either as individuals and/or a charity, would like to write a feature for the book?
I am aiming to have the book finished in the next several months. After that, I will go through the process of finding an agent, who should then help in finding a publisher to take it on. In the meantime, my Creative Writing degree is currently going through a unit called, ‘Writing in the Community’. For my assignment, I am being encouraged to start the process of getting these features – or at least some of them – started sooner than first anticipated, with work on them commencing mid-January.
Aside from the book, I am releasing three music singles next year as ‘Ben Caleb Rose’, with approximate releases of March, July/August, and October. The middle single, July/August, will be a song called, ‘To You, Our Son’. Like the book, I plan on using this song as a way of raising awareness for both the reality of what can happen and for your charity.
If you have any questions, please ask.
Once again, thank you for the support you have given us – in, what was the hardest, craziest life of our lives, you helped incredibly.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Ben
07790606966
EMAIL END
Tuesday morning, I received a reply, expressing that they were excited about the projects I have planned – one of which being the assignment project, the features for the book: ‘9 months, my arse’.
Initially, they asked for a phone call. But, as Gemma and I are returning to Oxford tomorrow (12.12.19) for an appointment at the hospital, I have suggested to speak to them in person there.