A Sandbach dad is taking part in a daring challenge to help the charity which came to his family's rescue when their son was born at 26 weeks.

Ed Ditchfield and wife Hazelle who live in Elworth spent weeks at their son, at their son Thomas's beside after he was born over three months' early and spent 101 days in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) across three different hospitals.

At his most vulnerable, Thomas, now aged three, who weighed just 1 lb 10 oz when he was born, spent his first weeks on life support in NICU at Arrowe Park hospital on the Wirral.

The couple stayed at the Ronald McDonald House Charity UK accommodation onsite so they could be close to him and visit Thomas as often as they wanted to sometimes during the night.

Now Ed, who lives on the Abbeyfields estate in Sandbach, is taking part in a skydive weekend from 4 July - 5 July, jumping 15,000 feet out of a plane to raise money for the charity.

"These early days can only be described as traumatic for our family and incredibly distressing, but we could not have got through it without the support of the Ronald McDonald House Charity" said Ed, a commercial manager for a facilities company.

He added: "They provided us with accommodation support in the same hospital where Thomas was treated so we could be with our son. Those months were filled with uncertainty and despair but also hope he'd survive."

Now Thomas, who attends Apples and Pears Nursery near Sandbach, is just like any other three-year-old and loves nothing more than dressing up as Spiderman and playing with his toy cars and dinosaurs.

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"He's our little miracle and such a great big brother to his little sister, Zoe," said Ed. "The accommodation was only two floors up from where Thomas was in his incubator meaning we could visit him any hour of the day."

Ed has set up a JustGiving page for the skydive here and has already raised £941. He said: "I'm looking forward to the skydive even though I am a little nervous. It's for such a good cause and we want to do anything to help that we can."

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