February is 'Heart Month', and this year Tiny Tickers 'Heart Week' is on on 8th-14th.

Our little superstar (Edie) is walking 21,000 steps for our little superhero (Etta) this heart week.

We picked 21,000 because Etta had her open heart surgery on the 21st of the month - and because I originally said 10,000 steps a day and quickly realised that was never happening for a three year old!

Edie has excitedly picked out her own little pedometer and would love it if you could sponsor her! We are also doing a raffle with lots of lovely local businesses who have kindly offered to support us.
Some of my lovely friends (Lucy, Hayley & Shane - thank you) are also fundraising for us!

We will forever be endlessly grateful to both Birmingham Children's Hospital and to Ronald McDonald House Charities for all they have done and will continue to do for us as a family, and we will always support them. But this February I have decided to raise money for Tiny Tickers, please read why...

Every year 1,000 babies leave hospital with their heart defect undetected, last year Etta was one of them. A baby is born with a serious heart condition every two hours in the UK and despite congenital heart disease being one of the biggest killers of infants, only around half of congenital heart defects are picked up during routine prenatal scanning. Babies born with serious heart problems are at significant risk of disability or even death if not diagnosed before they fall into the early stages of heart failure.

Etta was born with two congenital heart defects, and was showing little to no symptoms when her body and organs began shutting down. Both of her conditions should have been detected at our 20 week scan, but were missed, and the reason Etta is here today is because I kept listening to the niggling in my head that something was wrong with her, even though several healthcare professionals had already turned us away. Shockingly, one of her intensive care nurses told me that probably around half the cardiac babies he sees on PICU get there there under exactly the same circumstances - a missed diagnosis and a parent's instinct that kept pushing when their gut said something was wrong. We have been SO lucky, I count my blessings every single day, but this has left me feeling 'What about the parent's that are repeatedly fobbed off when they feel something is wrong and seek help? What about the babies that never get diagnosed?'.

Tiny tickers exist to help babies with serious heart conditions – giving them a better start in life and the best possible chance for their future.
£10 - helps provide support and prepare a family for their baby’s open heart surgery.
£25 - helps a GP understand more about CHD & the importance of the 20 week scan for detecting heart conditions.
£50 - helps train a sonographer to be able to detect heart conditions which gives a baby a better chance of survival.
£725 - provides a pulse oximetry testing kit to a maternity department, helping to detect heart conditions before they leave hospital.


Thank you for taking the time to read this, and to those that have supported us, and of course to anyone who is able to kindly donate in these difficult times.

Love Ruby, Sam, Edie & Etta xxxx