Every 5 minutes, a baby is admitted to neonatal care. Spoons are a Northern Neonatal Charity who draw on their own personal experiences of neonatal care to understand and empathise with families who find themselves in similar circumstances. Their primary focus is to support the whole family, practically and emotionally from admission to the neonatal unit and beyond, working collaboratively with NHS colleagues and other services.

Our daughters Pippa and Francesca were born 2 months premature and were cared for in NICU in Manchester. Francesca was discharged after 23 days at Manchester children hospital, but Pippa had been diagnosed with a coarctation of her Aorta and required heart surgery. Because she was born just 1.3kg she needed to grow to at least 2kg before they could operate on her safely. On the 5th of February Pippa was transferred to Birmingham Hospital and on the 7th underwent open heart surgery. We were discharged on the 16th of February after spending 79 days in hospital.

Throughout this time, I witnessed the love, grit and devotion of a mother, was humbled by the incredible work of our doctors and nurses, and met people going through the biggest tests of their lives. I also got to meet my hero Doctor Tim Jones who fixed my little girl’s heart.

A stress we didn't need to worry about was our finances, but many families are not so fortunate, with some unable to be at their children’s bedside when they needed them the most. I will be doing my little bit over the coming days to support Spoons by running at least 20 minutes a day for the duration of Pippa’s stay in hospital [79 days].