Our beautiful baby boy Jos Tartèse-Joy was born on the 9th December 2020, at full term and after a relatively straightforward pregnancy.

For reasons we do not yet, and may never understand, Jos’ heart stopped beating during labour. Jos was delivered very quickly through an emergency C-section, and it took several minutes to the medical team to get his little heart to start beating again. Unfortunately, during this time with no heart rate Jos’ brain was starved of oxygen, causing a condition called hypoxic-ischaemic encephalopathy (HIE).

A few hours after his birth, Jos was transferred to the specialist Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the Royal Oldham Hospital, where we were looked after with much kindness by the NICU nurses and doctors. Jos was kept on a cooling mat in a spaceship-looking incubator, as cooling can help to limit damages after brain injuries. After the end of the cooling process (72 hours), we were able to take Jos out of the incubator to cuddle him, change his nappy, talk to him, and introduce him to his grand-parents and to the menagerie of toy animals they brought with them. Jos was super cute and squidgy, and apart from the many wires looked like a perfect sleeping baby. Despite the amazing technology and the fantastic team of people caring for Jos (it’s like a Formula 1 pit team!), we knew from very early on that his prognosis was probably not going to be good. After many conversations and reviews with the doctors, it became clear that there wasn’t going to be a positive path where Jos would be able to come home with us and see the big outdoors. On the 15th December 2020, at only six days old, Jos peacefully died with us holding him surrounded by our love.

Jos will always be our firstborn son, and we will always be his parents. We are blessed that we got to meet him and spend six days by his side. This only happened thanks to the amazing efforts of all the NICU team in Oldham. The aim of this page is to try to do something positive and raise funds to help the team, through the Spoons charity, so that they can continue to help babies like Jos and their parents, even though it will never be enough to thank them for all they did for him over the 6 days he was there.

Thank you for reading Jos’ story.

Katie and Romain