This is my beautiful first grandchild, Henry’s story and my son’s words about their experience in the neonatal unit and my inspiration for running Manchester marathon.

‘Henry Stuart Adams was born on Christmas Day at 6.23pm after a straightforward pregnancy with no complications but a very long labour, we had the most magical few moments of our much loved and eagerly awaited baby boy watching breathing his first breath and laying on his mummy as we welcomed him into the world. This sadly took a turn for the worst as one of our brilliant midwives, Penny noticed Henry was breathing irregularly so immediately called for the baby doctor. Shortly after this Henry started to have seizures and was rushed into the neonatal intensive care unit where he stopped breathing and became unstable. As a first time father witnessing this, I feared the worst as it was an incredibly shocking and distressing experience. I was kindly calmed by the nurse in charge Natasha who showed me a great deal of compassion. I could see the team were calm, collected and professionally handling the situation like true heroes, At the time there was no indication as to why the seizures happened which meant nobody knew if they were going to happen again and therefore he was treated for multiple possibilities such as infection, meningitis etc as an emergency precaution. Henry was wired up to machines from his head to his tiny toes, monitoring his brain activity, his heart, his breathing, he had blood tests, cannulas fitted for his anti viral and antibiotics, he was given a lumbar puncture, heart scan, kidney scan and an MRI from which the results showed up a flash on Henry’s brain. After some assessment from the amazing neonatal team of doctors and consultants they came to the conclusion that Henry had very unusually suffered a stroke from a clot in his brain to which they still were unsure on reasons why this had happened so asked for a second opinion from Alder Hey’s children’s hospital which later confirmed their findings.

With the events that happened a lot of special moments happened in the neonatal unit for us as new parents with our baby son. A very upsetting feeling for me as Henry’s dad was the fact I had not held my boy at all from birth and with all his needs with the equipment connected to him, it was tough but understandable at the time, day 3 of being in the intensive care bay on Neonatal unit I was sat with Henry when nurse Ashleigh said the words “dad you need to have a hold” these words will stay with me forever as it was the best feeling in the world. Ashleigh helped that special moment happen and I cannot thank her enough, she showed love and kindness in every way possible in her care for Henry. With Henry’s mum being in a fair bit of discomfort from the birth and pure exhaustion she understandably needed time to recover as she had had a very hard time of it, which meant I had some moments alone at Henry’s side where I, as a new dad needed a bit of guidance, another big moment we had was the first feed on my own with him and Deborah, another of Henry’s nurses really showed me the ropes on some great tips and tricks along which to some may sound like nothing but to me meant the world and made me and Henry more comfortable especially whilst he was still connected by lines to his monitors. I will never forget her help and care for our son, she had a friendly manner and really helped with any uncertainty on anything we had and answered our many questions. On the neonatal unit he had a whole bunch of wonderful humans looking after him and helping us as parents through the tears to even making us laugh in the hardest time.

We noticed a lot of babies stories from the unit and their lives afterwards and have seen and heard some excellent stories and lengthy time they have spent on the neonatal. After the 8 days of ups and downs in the unit and a plan for the next couple of years monitoring Henrys development after his stroke, we simply cannot thank every single member of the team on the neonatal unit enough. The Neonatal staff of Princess Royal Hospital Telford really are extraordinary in their skills, efforts, care and love for the babies that go into the unit, they deserve everything good from life, they saved our son Henry and they save more and more babies on a regular day to day basis they are the real life heroes of this world and will never be without our admiration and love for everything they have done and continue to do. Henry’s amazing nana is running the Manchester marathon and if possible trying to raise some money to help give something back to the neonatal unit that may help other babies and parents who may go through the neonatal unit. Please if you can donate to this great charity of the neonatal unit princess royal Telford our heroes ❤️’

I cannot express my gratitude enough, not only for the quick thinking and highly skilled experts for all they did to save Henry but also for the care and compassion shown to my son Jib and my daughter-in-law Paige at this incredibly traumatic time. And they continue to do so for all the families that need them ❤️

Thank you for taking the time to read and for any donations and all of your support ❤️❤️