Our daughter, Poppy, was born on February 25th 2013 by emergency c-section at Gloucester Royal Hospital, she was 12 weeks early and weighed 1'9lbs (900 grams).

At 11 days old Poppy was transferred to St Michaels Hospital in Bristol as she had developed Necrotising Enterocolitis, this condition is also known as NEC this is a serious complication of prematurity that affects the intestines.

Poppy was put on a course of antibiotics for 5 days to see if this could help unfortunately it didn't seem to be helping so they decided to operate on her. When she was returned to the unit we faced the hardest talk ever, we were told that most of her intestines had to be removed as a lot of it was dead due to the NEC infection.

Poppy had 20cm of intestines left but for her to have a fighting chance ideally they would need to leave 25cm. She had a stoma and we were told we had to wait 6weeks until the next surgery to see if her intestines have grown and if it is healthy (as what was left was slightly discoloured and they were unsure if this was more dead tissue forming or whether or not it was just stained). 

A few days after the surgery we were told that her stoma wasn't really working so she had to have a contrast. The report of this showed that she had a blockage which was causing her stoma not to work as it should. Then a few days later we noticed a massive difference as her stoma had starting working as it should but no one knows what's going on, on the inside until her next op.

Poppy is surprising everyone with how well she is doing, she now weighs 3'15 (to date -25th April 2013) and her operation has been brought forward to Monday 29th April 2013. This operation will tell us if Poppy will be able to survive and if she does if she will a normal life, this roller coaster is not over yet and Poppy is fighting it every day.

The surgery was postponed and finally took place today, Tuesday 30th April 2013.  The surgeon was able to remove the stoma bag and put her intestines back together, we were pleased to be informed that her intestines had grown.

We are now hoping that in a few days time when she has recovered from the surgery that she can start feeding. When this happens it should tell us if her gut is working and obsorbing the milk to help her grow. They will start off giving her very small amounts and gradly build it up, there maybe times where they have to reduce it. She will remain on TPN (food through a bag and straight into her vein) until she can manage full feeds. Poppy may need to keep this line semi-permanent until they are completely happy with her progress and it holding her feeds, she may even be able to come home.

We still have a long journey ahead of us, but today has been very positive and we will keep fighting on.

Five days since Poppys surgery and she is recovering well, she came off the ventilator and morphine two days later, she is now off her CPAP and seems to be coping without it, she was even moved into HDU instead of ICU. Poppy managed to get to 5ml of milk and unfortunately we had a small set back and we have had to stop feeds and start antibiotics for 7 days. She now weighs 5'4lbs and the xrays are showing clear so hopefully we can start feeds again soon.

Since being on the unit we have met some lovely people from other parents to staff who are caring for our daughter. 

We were so surprised at how the unit offered us accommodation when we first arrived at Bristol. To be honest we had not even thought about this until it was mentioned to us as all we were concerned about was seeing Poppy and what was happening. We were offered a room at Cots for Tots which is accommodation for parents that have babies on the unit.

The Cots for Tots house was a place to go and rest and have a break from the hospital, it had everything you needed to stay near your baby. Anne the manager of Cots for Tots was very kind, helpful, caring and understandable which helped us at this stressful time.

The hospital and specialists are doing so much for us and Poppy, this is why Ben, Rob and Mark are running the Bristol 10k on Sunday 5th May 2013 in order to raise money to help support Cots for Tots as a little way of saying thank you for everything they are doing for us. They each need to reach a min of £100 of donations each but it would be fantastic to raise as much as we can.

It has been a while since this page was updated as so much has happen. Poppy I was transferred to the Bristol Children's Hospital on 19th July 2013, today(12th Aug) she currently weighs 8'8lbs. We are still battling the feeding but we are making changes every day. Poppy has started 3 bottles a day and 3 lots of baby rice per day - so well things seem to be going well.

Poppys Grampy Mark is doing a Triathlon on 25th August 2013 in Westonbirt to help raise more money for Cots for Tots. The triathlon will consist of a 400m pool swim,a 24k bike ride and 5k run. Please support Mark as this is for a very good cause and will help keep the Cots for Tots funded so that they will be able to help more families in the future.

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Thank you from Team Poppy xx