🎗Please share to raise awareness🎗

Friday 2nd October 2020 the day our whole world came crashing down.

We had our 20 week scan and were told it looks like baby has an abnormality on his spine. We got sent up to the Royal Infirmary straight away to be seen by doctors and midwifes. This is where the dreaded news was confirmed. Our precious baby has myelomeningocele, the most severe type of Spina Bifida which is not curable😢. We were told our baby will be paralysed from the waist down, never be able to walk, won’t have full function of his bladder and/or bowels, have swallowing difficulties and have possible brain damage.

We were given 2 choices from the hospital, to terminate the pregnancy or carry on knowing he’s going to have a severe disability. We were left over the weekend to do research and make the hardest and most heartbreaking decision of our entire life’s.

During research we found an article about Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital in London performing the first U.K. surgery in the womb for a baby with Spina Bifida in 2018. This is quite a complex surgery which is done between 23 and 26 weeks of pregnancy and it involves opening up the mothers stomach and womb, exposing the Spina Bifida but keeping baby in the sac and not delivering him, repairing the hole in the spine and back, putting baby back inside the womb safely and stitching mum back up. This was something we were keen to find out more about and this meant we now possibly had a 3rd choice.

When we returned to hospital on Monday 5th October for our next appointment we asked about this surgery. We spoke with Midwifes, Doctors, Neurosurgeons, Neurologists and teams that specialise in children with Spina Bifida. They gave us all the information we needed. At this stage baby is still able to move and kick his legs around in the womb so one benefit of this surgery is although it won’t be able to cure the Spina Bifida as nothing can, it can help prevent any further nerve damage being done in the lower half of his body from now until he is born. Which means preserving the movement he has in his legs at the minute and this gives him a greater chance of being able to walk. It can also reserve the brain malformation. As this was something we were interested in a doctor phoned the surgeons at Great Ormond Street to find out if I met the criteria to be considered for the surgery... which I did!

After countless hospital, midwife, specialists and telephone appointments to do tests, gather as much information as possible, medical history etc. We finally got all our results back which came back as good as they possibly can.

Ross and I as a couple have decided we want to give our precious boy the best chance he deserves in life. We found out I’ll be flying to Belgium for the surgery and it will take place on Friday 13th November (unlucky for some but hopefully lucky for us). Any donations towards Great Ormond Street Children’s Charity would be greatly appreciated from the both of us as the only way this surgery can be offered on the NHS is if they can rely on donations from the public towards this charity. Any shares of our story are also greatly appreciated to raise awareness of this surgery as many people don’t know this 3rd choice exists. Thank You.🎗💙

*We have 2 donation pages as the one on Facebook only lets us share it on Facebook so we had to make a second one that we could share on all social media so if you’ve donated to one then you don’t have to donate to the other as they’re both going to the same charity*