Tarli was born 10 weeks early by emergency C-section. From what we understand, she got stuck when being delivered. Tarli went straight to intensive care, where she stayed for 6 weeks. During this time, she received 3 blood transfusions, oxygen, and different life-saving medicines. The day before we brought Tarli home, we received the devastating news that she had sustained some brain damage, which would affect her movement and balance. Just before Tarli's 1st birthday, we were told she had spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy.

All of Tarli's limbs are extremely stiff, and they also go into spasms, which are the main cause of her pain. All of her body is affected in different ways; she has trouble drinking and chokes often, her stomach muscles are weak, so she finds it difficult to sit, and she has to use many different pieces of equipment every day. To be honest, I could go on and on about how CP affects Tarli, but the bottom line is that Tarli doesn't let it affect her… she talks all the time, taught herself to commando crawl, feed herself, draw, use an iPad better than me and her dad, and she can even walk a little way in her specialist walker! Tarli lives her life just like any other 5-year-old and has an infectious sense of humour with a beautiful smile!

Due to the cerebral palsy, Tarli has had many stays in hospital. She had an operation on her hip in April this year, where her hip was put back into the socket using metalwork. She was put in a Spica cast – basically, it's a cast from her chest to her ankles with a bar across the knee to support it all. This was removed after 7 weeks. Since this operation, Tarli has needed intensive physiotherapy, but unfortunately, her progress hasn’t been what we were expecting. She still can’t straighten her leg or bear weight, and she is still in an awful amount of pain. Now, with the prospect of having the same major operation on her left hip, the worry is that she will deteriorate even more after another 7 weeks in a cast.

I have researched giving Tarli private physiotherapy on a weekly basis, as this is what we want and need for her. I give Tarli 1-2 hours of physiotherapy a day to loosen, stretch, and build up her muscles. But I am not a trained professional, and I feel it's now time for me and Tarli to ask for help. All I hope for Tarli is that she will be able to do the things she could before her operation – things she enjoyed most, like standing in her standing frame, walking in her walker, and using her trike that we raised so much money for. All of these things she hasn't done since April and probably won't do again for a very long time without this intervention. Unfortunately, going private is very costly, and for Tarli to actually benefit from continuous physiotherapy, we are going to have to raise a substantial amount of money.

All I ask is please, can you donate whatever you can to help me help Tarli? It would really be greatly appreciated.

7.5% of all donations to Tree of Hope in relation to this appeal will be allocated to the general charitable purposes of Tree of Hope to cover our core operating costs.

If we raise insufficient funds, or surplus funds, then the funds will be used, if appropriate, to fund support for our child’s needs in accordance with Tree of Hope’s charitable objects. If in those circumstances we are unable to use all or part of the funds for the benefit of our child in accordance with Tree of Hope’s charitable objectives, then any funds that cannot be used will be transferred to be used for the general charitable purposes of Tree of Hope.