Where to begin?

I’ve chosen to fundraise for Bliss because I want to make a real difference to the 95,000 babies born premature or sick every year. Every donation that’s made to this page brings Bliss closer to ensuring that every baby born premature or sick in the UK has the best chance of survival and quality of life. Bliss does that by supporting parents to care for their babies, campaigning for better neonatal care and enabling life-changing research.

My beautiful little girl Elsie was born on 15th July, by emergency section at only 32 weeks + 2 days old weighing just 3 pounds 6 ounces.  At approximately 4am I woke up with pains in my stomach.  Fast forward two hours and my life was turned completely upside down as I tried to come to terms with the news that I was about to give birth.  Words cannot describe the series of emotions I was experiencing at that moment.

Elsie was born by emergency section and was not breathing when she arrived and had to be incubated. Due to the shock of everything that happened in such a short space of time, my body went into shock which meant I had to give birth under general anaesthetic.  This meant I woke up not knowing where or how my baby was.  Later that same day I had to undergo further surgery having suffered internal bleeding which resulted in me needing a blood transfusion.  One of the hardest parts of all of this was not being able to spend those precious hours immediately after Elsie's arrival with her in my arms. 

During the five weeks that followed I was unable to feed Elsie myself, which meant having to spend hours each day expressing to give her the natural milk supply she needed.  That - coupled with the constant attempts to establish natural feeding - was one of the hardest things I have ever experienced.  I could not have done this without the incredible support of the SCBU team at St. John's.  I will never forget the care and attention they gave my baby and I during that period.

One Sunday a little ray of sunshine walked into SCBU with her green tshirt, sat next to me and asked me how I was. At that point I completely off loaded all my fears, thoughts and feelings to Coady who completely understood all I was telling her.  She helped me more than she will ever know.

Elsie came home at 6 weeks old and is continuing to grow and become stronger every day.  

Giving birth to my premature daughter was the most challenging experience I have ever been through.  Of course Elsie, my older daughter Maisie and husband David kept me strong during that time. 

By raising money for Bliss we can help many other families in the same position we found ourselves in and help bring future families together by providing more resources.