In the UK, a baby is born with a serious heart condition every two hours & only around half of congenital heart defects are picked up during prenatal scanning. 1000 babies leave the hospital each year with an undetected heart condition, myself & my Auren being one of those babies. When I was born, I left the hospital with a serious heart condition that was not picked up and required open heart surgery at a young age & unfortunately Auren has developed the same congenital heart disease. Despite CHD being the biggest infant killer in the UK, babies are NOT checked for this before they leave the hospital.

Luckily as Auren was being checked and discharged from hospital, as they said he was perfectly healthy, I pushed for his heart to be checked due to my own heart condition and to our surprise, Auren indeed had a serious heart condition. This was not detected during my pregnancy and our baby boy was about to be let home with no clue his little heart had several problems!

Myself, Aiden & Auren then stayed in the hospital for a few days for Auren to be monitored until he was transferred to the children’s hospital for tests to confirm what was wrong with his heart and monitor his breathing as it was extremely high. Unfortunately Auren has several holes in his heart between both the upper and bottom chambers which is referred to as Artial Septal Defect (ASD) and Ventricular Septal Defect (VSD) which will need closed. He also has a very rare condition called Partial Anomalous Pulmonary Venus Drainage (PAPVD) which means his blood vessels that return from his lungs to his heart do not return to the correct part like they should and will need redirected to the correct place.

This was all sadly confirmed when Auren was only 3 days old & we were told he will indeed require open heart surgery for his heart to be repaired which was such a shock & totally broke us. We are currently awaiting a decision from the cardiologists in the hospital as to when his surgery will be but we pray this can be when our baby boy is a bit bigger and stronger although he has showed us so much strength already & he is such a little fighter.

Tiny tickers is a charity who help raise money to fund equipment & new technologies to improve detection, diagnosis and treatment for babies with heart conditions improving a baby’s chances of survival before they leave the hospital. Tiny tickers want all babies to have the best start at life and get the treatment they require as early as possible and believe all babies should be checked for CHD before leaving the hospital. They raise money for equipment to be put into hospitals in order to do this and They also train sonograpers to help patients with CHD & provide support and advice to families in need.

Myself & aiden have decided to do a 10K run on February 4th to help raise funds for tiny tickers heart week. Any donations would be greatly appreciated to help raise as much as we can to help provide life saving equipment to hospitals so every baby can have their heart checked before leaving like they should and give every baby that better fighting start to life like they deserve.