Background:

Our daughter was born at 32 weeks and 5 days. We spent a month in hospital thinking she will be fine once she got bigger. On the day we were getting discharged, they measured her head and it grown so much so quickly they did a head scan and noticed she had a buildup of fluid, and you could not see the brain. We had a MRI 5 days later and we were told it was caused by a bleed on the brain due to her being premautre and that some of her brain was being hidden by the fluid build up and she has narrowing in the ventricle and some not even devolped.

The day we had the MRI we were rushed to Bristol 2 hours later and by 6pm she was in surgery to put the access device in (31st October 2017) on the 9th November she had a second operation to widen and add some holes in the ventricles. That operation worked well and looked like we wouldnt need a shunt. We got to the 28th Decemebr without any fluid build up and we went up for a appointment and her head size had gone up so she had a head tap and we though that would be it, we get though the weekend and it gets worse, We dont even give our local hospital chance to say yes or no to coming up we rang them saying we are on our way coz her head size had jumped up 1.5cm over 2 days, we ended up going back the next two days to do the same coz it just kept swelling.

We got told we had to be in Bristol for the 4th January because she will have the shunt put in the next day, we were home on the Saturday afternoon following her operation, a quick turnaround for us. Currently, she seems to be responding really well, and appears to be a normal, happy, giggling baby, with the exception of a couple of scars and bumps.

Bristol Royal Hospital for Children are helped by their 'Grand Appeal', inspired by Wallace and Gromit, this appeal helps to raise funds to help the hospital care for and treat sick children. We feel that we would like to help raise money for the vital work that they do, after everything that they have done for our daughter.