place. News Corp is a network of leading companies in the worlds of diversified media, news, education, and information services.Actors Sarah Parish and James Murray talk about the loss of their daughter Ella-Jayne — and their mission to save other kids' livesAfter losing Ella-Jayne to a rare genetic condition, they are determined to turn their heartbreak into a chance to help save children’s lives.James Murray and Sarah Parish lost their baby daughter Ella-Jayne eight years ago to a rare genetic conditionThey refused and instead left the country to do manual labour in an orphanage in Cambodia for a month.It was either that or “drink ourselves to death in a pub”, says Murray.They found Ella-Jayne lifeless in her cot at home, Parish tells me in the quiet of their kitchen, in the Hampshire countryside.“Even when she died, there was this terrible grief,” she says, “but also this rush of euphoria, for having known her and having been given a gift.”This year, when Ella-Jayne would have been seven, they have decided to build a children’s hospital.Murray and Parish have set themselves the task of building a paediatric trauma centre for the whole of the south of England. And then suddenly . James Murray was born on January 22, 1975 in Manchester, Greater Manchester, England. They have two children. Every morning we’d go in, and it is exhausting staring at your child who’s very sick.“At the end of the day we’d be advised to go but then we’d be halfway home and we’d get a call saying, ‘You’d better come back.’”“They don’t say, ‘We don’t think she’s going to survive,’” says Parish.
She had to be rushed to Southampton for a heart operation.“That was when it felt, right, we’re going into battle now,” says Murray.“Those first few weeks you never feel so alone,” Parish says.
Have you been taking drugs? And this time it’s going to be way worse’They each wrote a small speech, separately, for her memorial service, and they keep them framed upstairs.“It was hell,” says Parish. Now six, she flies in from school at the end of our conversation.The centre will be based in Southampton but cover nine counties. They couldn’t get her off the heart bypass machine; later they couldn’t close her chest; next she got an infection.“She was never the same after that,” says Parish. “We didn’t know what we were doing. And this time it’s going to be way worse.’“I really fell apart. “She looked perfect,” says Parish.
“And I wouldn’t change it.“It’s easy, as an actor, to forget your privilege, and now one day we can be in an intensive care for the charity with very sick children, and the next you’re on set playing dress-up.”Their daughter Nell was born ten months after Ella-Jayne died. He is an actor and director, known for Cucumber (2015), 6 Underground (2019) and Defiance (2013). You’ve done it.’ She’d got the strength.It was like somebody said, ‘Now, you know that hell you’ve been through, you’re going to do it all again.
this isn’t my life.’”“We were in a state of shock from the moment she was born to the moment she died,” says Murray. Now one day we can be in an intensive care with very sick children, and the next you’re on set playing dress-upDuring this second operation Ella-Jayne nearly died again. So many times they said, ‘This could be it.’""They’d be like, ‘You’d better stay the night,’” says Murray. Then a few days into the New Year she had a sudden surge of life.She had been fed by a tube, never able to take more than a few sips of a bottle. I had to somehow get myself together to do that job.”Parish finished quickly to take up the vigil again. Just what’s going on?’”The experts didn’t know but performed an emergency cesarean section.“As they took the baby out, I remember the two doctors looked at each other — do you remember that?” she asks.“Yes,” says Murray, “they showed me Ella-Jayne, she gave a small whimper, and then they took her straight away to an incubator. She had thick black hair and a face like a porcelain doll.”Later they were to realise her distinctive looks were a symptom of her Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome. A late scan was meant to be routine.“But it was that horrible thing of, ‘Why aren’t they speaking?’” she says.“The obstetrician didn’t have a great bedside manner. James Murray appeared on This Morning with Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford in August 2018 to discuss all about his ongoing drama Age Before Beauty and his relationship with fellow actor Sarah Parish. Sarah Parish's actor husband James Murray: 'My daughter is my best friend' ACTOR James, 39, lives in Hampshire with his actress wife Sarah Parish and their five-year-old daughter Nell That they find “tough”.“It’s the parents,” she says. They hope it will grow to become a sister establishment to Great Ormond St. For further details of our complaints policy and to make a complaint please click Comments are subject to our community guidelines, which can be viewed Now the actors to build a paediatric trauma centre for the whole of the south of England The couple were thrilled when Parish got pregnant at age 40, and married three months before Ella-Jayne was due Mistresses star Sarah was suffering from postnatal depression when she had to go back to work The couple 'closed off the world' to focus on sick Ella-Jayne The couple's daughter Nell was born ten months after Ella-Jayne died