For those of you who don't know why the NICU at St.Peters hospital in Chertsey is very special to us, please read on.

On the 5th of January 2017, my husband and I said hello to our beautiful baby girl, Camelia, eight weeks earlier than scheduled at just 32 weeks gestation.

Camelia was born early as I had a rare condition, which meant that had she not been delivered early via caesarean, she wouldn’t be here with us today. As Camelia was premature she needed to stay in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at St. Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey for nearly a month, where she received incredible care from the doctors and nurses who work tirelessly to ensure that premature babies have every chance in the world they aren’t quite ready to be in. We owe them more than we can ever give.

Giving birth to your baby and being unable to take her home, or do the first nappy change, as she had to be whisked off by a team of doctors and nurses, is unbelievably hard. Thankfully the team at St. Peters NICU are compassionate and caring beyond belief and they didn’t just take care of Camelia, but of my husband and I as well. Needless to say I went home a wreck each night as I hated leaving her in the hospital and in the care of people who aren’t her Mummy or Daddy, but it helped so much to know that she was being cared for by people who understand how hard it is to say goodnight. Better still and by pure chance my husbands’ Auntie worked there as well, so we were lucky to have a friendly face during this difficult time. It was never too much trouble when we phoned in to check up on Camelia during the night, or to stop by at three in the morning because we needed to deliver expressed milk; they never ceased to amaze us throughout.

St.Peters hospital is one of only a few level three NICUs in the country and it costs in the region of £80k for each neonatal intensive care cot, £60k for a premature baby ultrasound machine and they are in continuous need of donations to continue purchasing specialist equipment and training, which the NHS can’t provide funding for.

We try to raise whatever we can for this great charity, if we can get even a few hundred pounds together, it will enable them to buy a new chair for the intensive care unit, which might seem insignificant, but when you spend over twenty hours a day sitting, eating and sleeping next to an incubator, you become very grateful to the person who raised the money to enable them to buy a nice comfy chair for you to share every moment of the day with your tiny little baby.

Most, if not all of you, have met Camelia by now and we are so thankful that despite her early and unexpected start she didn’t have much in the way of complications, and she is growing into our crazy, amazing, beautiful 5 year old girl! 

We have a few fundraising ideas up our sleeve for 2023, but Camelia's amazing school, Pennthorpe in Rudgwick, are kindly celebrating World Prematurity Day by wearing purple accessories in honour of Little Roo Neonatal Fun on the 17th November. 

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts 
Victoria, Jamie and Camelia x