I'm hoping you can help me with the Tiny Tickers October fundraising month! Ellie, Adam and I will be completing 125 acts of kindness this month!

1 in every 125 babies born in the UK with a serious heart condition. Every year 1,000 babies leave hospital with their heart defect undetected, potentially putting their lives in grave danger.

When our beautiful Ellie left the labour ward we were all completely oblivious to everything. We all saw a happy and healthy, precious little girl who fed well, gained weight and was the most perfect baby in the world. 

9 months later our world turned upside down and within a week of the shocking and heartbreaking news that Ellie's heart had major problems, I was sat in the back of an ambulance racing down to Great Ormond St. She deteriorated so quickly that the surgery date moved from '1 month' to '1 week' to 'end of this week' to 'emergency as soon as possible' within a couple of days of arriving there. Her saturation levels kept falling to 30-40%, and had never been above 70% (at the start of our hospital journey, nurses would think the SATs probe was broken!!) I witnessed nurses shake their head to each other when Ellie was spelling and they couldn't get her oxygen levels up, and doctors preparing us for the worst on more than one occasion before emergency surgery. We ended up staying at Great Ormond St for over 3 months (most of which in ICU), missing her 1st Christmas and not seeing family members throughout the stay (due to fear of COVID spreading). She had numerous complications which late diagnosis and late surgery more than likely contributed to.

Her heart defects were missed in pregnancy scans, so if Ellie's oxygen saturation level was measured as part of her routine newborn check it would have shown it struggle to get to 70% and alarm bells would have rung from day one. 

Tiny Tickers is passionate about getting neonatal pulse oximeters in hospitals and training staff (including sonographers) to become specialist in detecting congenital heart defects antenatally and postnatally. It also runs a support group for parents to reach out to when they need someone to talk to or to hear some positive outcome stories when they've been given devastating news. 

Please help me to raise money for Tiny Tickers and you could help save some babies lives! A hand-held hospital pulse oximeter would cost approximately £250 (our target amount!!