Thanks for visiting my fundraising page for Queen Charlotte's Hospital Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit.
It has been 12 months since our triplet boys were born and that means it is about 16 months since I have done any serious exercise, basically from the day I found out I was having triplets!
The boys were born 2 1/2 months premature by emergency C-section and weighed in at 2lb 2oz, 2lb 11oz, and 2lb 15oz. barely more than a bag of sugar each and so tiny. They were immediately rushed to the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Those early days were a bit of a haze as we spent most of our waking hours in the space-age environment that is NICU with the constant beeping of machines. It was a few days before we were even allowed to hold them as they were so sick and so fragile and all the wires and tubes that they were hooked up to weighed more than them. The expertise and care of the doctors and nurses was phenomenal and the support they gave us helped us get through those dark early days. They are a wonderful, compassionate and skilled team of people and their continuing support and care meant that after 7 1/2 long weeks in hospital the boys were ready to come home.
I will be forever indebted to the staff at Queen Charlotte's NICU for saving the lives of our beautiful boys, but we were the lucky ones. The unit is constantly in need of funds to ensure that they have enough incubators and equipment available to help the sickest babies. It wasn't until after the boys were born that the unit confirmed that they actually had 3 spaces to be able to take all of them. If they hadn't had the space, it might have been a different story. It is hard to believe how far the boys have come and that our noisy, boisterous and fun 1 year olds were once those tiny little people in incubators. I would like to help make sure that other parents have the same wonderful outcome we did. It seems to me that about an hour of running (I am very unfit!) is a small price to pay to be able to help others. Ellis is also running and is supporting the other charity very close to our hearts (Bliss, the charity for premature babies).
Anything you can give would be greatly appreciated so please sponsor me now!