AN RAF medic who went through the trauma of losing his three-day-old son, has climbed Roseberry Topping 28 times in one day to help other bereaved parents.

Dan Swales started his challenge at 4am on Saturday (July 12), climbing the iconic 1,050ft peak until he had covered 29,290 ft - the equivalent of Mount Everest.

Dan, who is stationed at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and originally comes from Guisborough, raised £1,430 for 4Louis, a small charity based in Washington.

The Northern Echo:
Dan Swales on Roseberry Topping

The charity provides memory boxes to parents of stillborn and neonatal deaths and helped Dan and his partner Vicky when they lost their baby, Noah Theodore.

Noah had been born without complication days earlier. His proud parents had been introducing the new-born to family in the North-East, when he suddenly stopped breathing in the back of his parent’s car in Guisborough on May 21 last year.

Dan, who has carried out CPR many times as a medic in the RAF never imagined he would live through the horror of carrying out CPR on his own son.

“We had changed him and were just about to head home and mother’s instinct kicked in,” he said.

“He was a little bit jaundiced but nothing massively concerning. But there was something Vicky felt wasn’t right.

“We had a discussion, “do you want to go to hospital?” and she said, “no, because they’ll say I’m being stupid and over-reacting.”

“But he was our little boy, so we put him in the car seat and set off.

“Vicky was sat in the back of the car with him and said, “Dan, he’s not breathing; he’s not moving.”

The Northern Echo:

Noah Theodore Swales

Dan pulled the car over and carried out CPR on Noah next to the car, while Vicky ran into the Co-op and a nearby care home to find a defibrillator. None were available, but carers at the home ran out to help carry out CPR.

Noah was driven to the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough by ambulance with a police escort, but doctors were unable to save him.

Noah had died of bacterial meningitis after contracting Group B Strep (GBS), before there was even time to register his birth.

Doctors gave Dan and partner Vicky the chance to hold Noah as he passed away peacefully: “We held our perfect little boy in our arms and said goodbye to him,” said Dan.

They gave them a 4Louis memory box and placed inside it, impressions of Noah’s hands and feet and a lock of his hair.

“I haven’t come across them before in all the years I’ve been working in the health service," said Dan.

“Afterwards we thought, what if someone hadn’t given us this box?

“We didn’t have anything. We knew we weren’t going to be able to keep his baby grow because it had been cut.

“For the ones who don’t get to leave the hospital it means we have something as opposed to nothing.”

After Noah’s death, Dan went back to work but constantly questioned if he could have done more to save his son and had trouble sleeping. He was eventually diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

He said: “The military has the best mental health support. I got to see a psychiatric nurse and my treatment has gradually led to an improvement.”

Dan and Vicky wanted to do something to help other people who had gone through baby loss and after a while started to fund raise on behalf of 4Louis.

As well as providing memory boxes 4Louis is also funding training for a student midwife, somebody who has herself experienced the loss of her baby.

The Northern Echo:

Richard Webb, North Yorkshire County Council’s director of health and adult services joined Dan for part of the trek up and down Roseberry Topping after hearing his story on social media.

He said: “This challenge also struck a personal chord for me. Firstly, anyone who has lost a baby, before or after the birth –and I, like many, have been through this awful experience - will know how devastating that is: all those potential futures that you will never see.

“As a society, we are getting better at talking about death and bereavement – and yet the loss of a baby often seems too hard to talk about.

“As part of the county council’s Public Health work on mental health and bereavement, we are trying to encourage people to talk more, and to support each other around difficult issues and this is one where we all need to support each other to open up, and reach out. I am really keen to encourage a more public debate and to say, ‘you’re not alone’.

“Secondly, Roseberry Topping is my favourite hill and it’s a place where I have always found answers in good times and bad. When we lost our baby it was somewhere I would go to think things over – and it still is."

To donate; justgiving.com/fundraising/MYEVER28

  • For anyone affected by child bereavement, the following helplines and websites are available for support:
  • * Lullaby Trust - www.lullabytrust.org.uk support for families that experience sudden loss of baby. Helpline: 0808 802 6868 Support@lullabytrust.org.uk
  • * The Compassionate Friend: www.tcf.org.uk - support after death of a child of any age – helpline: 0845 123 2304 helpline@tcf.org.uk
  • * Child Death Helpline – http://childdeathhelpline.org.uk helpline: 0800 282 986 or from a mobile 0808 800 6019
  • * Child Bereavement UK - https://childbereavementuk.org/ - helpline: 0800 02 888 40
  • * SANDS - stillbirth and neonatal death charity - https://www.sands.org.uk/support/bereavement-support – helpline: 0808 164 3332 helpline@sands.org.uk