My daughter Niki was born on 5 April 2018. Her labour started off well, but after we started pushing her heart rate started to drop and caused concern for doctors who prepared us for an emergency C-section. We managed to deliver her naturally whilst being prepped, however it was immediately clear that something wasn't quite right. It took a little while to get her to cry, she seemed floppy and unresponsive when doctors passed her to me, but the stern concerned look on the doctors' faces was the biggest indicator.

It turned out that I had developed a temperature during labour and both of us had developed an infection. The worst news was that Niki had been deprived of oxygen during labour and would need to spend the first 3 days of her life being cooled to a chilly 33.5°, hopefully decreasing her chances of long term brain injury.

We hope that the cooling treatment has been effective. She's been given a good prognosis, but we'll really only know as she develops and tries to hit her developmental milestones.

In the meantime she's still fighting off an infection, with an expected 16 days of antibiotics before we'll get to take her home.

It wasn't quite what we expected for the 1st two weeks of her life, but we know she's in the right place and getting the best possible care. I come to the hospital 3 times a day for 3 hours at a time to get as much breastfeeding opportunity as possible in between also looking after my 22 month old at home.

Unfortunately the nursery is a little short on comfortable seats and more often than not the only seats available are hard, blue plastic chairs that wear you out and make it very difficult to cuddle your baby for an extended period of time.

As a thank you to the hospital who have taken such wonderful care of our gorgeous daughter we would like to donate afditional comfy chairs so that every cot space in each of the 3 nurseries have at least one comfy chair for weary patents to cuddle their babies.