During 2020 the year that most want to forget, we had a beautiful reason to remember, by welcoming our second son Jacob to the world.

However on day 2 of our precious baby's life, the world around us as we knew it began to crumble, standing alone in the SCBU unit (thanks Covid!) I was told that he had to have emergency life saving surgery to create a stoma as he had undiscovered IA.

From that moment it felt like seconds and we were whisked into NICU, Jacob was sedated ready for surgery and whisked off at the next available moment for surgery, hours later and we were finally reunited and all I remember was feeling so overwhelmed, seeing our little Jacob attached to so many wires and machines, all the while trying to learn as much as I could about IA and stomas and what that meant for Jacobs future.

This all alongside recovering from an emergency GA caesarean myself, juggling home life with our eldest son who was 2 at the time, during covid and its restrictions and all in a unit that cares for sick and premature babies...words can't describe that week and the trauma it brang us all as a family. Thank goodness for having a 'bubble' with my mum and that being the constant for Oscar at home, whilst Mark and I swapped over constantly for visits to NICU to be with Jacob . ❤

What I do remember, during all this upset and uncertainty was one thing was a constant...the friendly faces of the SSNAP team, who came to Jacobs incubator side and provided myself and my husband with a friendly introduction and most importantly the thing we had least thought about for ourselves, food and drinks!

They were honestly like angels appearing amongst the medical team and scary machines, medicines and medical talk with reassurance and empathy as to what that felt like and what we needed in those moments.

Understanding, from talking to us about our situation they also provided our eldest son who couldn't visit with a special SSNAP teddy identical to Jacobs that he could cuddle at home and send cuddles to Jacob via, also a story book containing a child called Jacob, which made Oscar smile :-) These things made all so more important as Oscar couldn't visit the unit doe to covid restrictions, so hadn't got to meet him yet. The special SSNAP teddies were used twice more, when Jacob went for a further two surgeries later on in his first year, so are very important to our boys ❤ 

We honestly can't thank the NHS staff and the SSNAP team for all of the help we recieved that week and without SSNAP we couldn't have got through those first few hours and days, having them there meant we got to spend every precious second we had with Jacob and not worrying about leaving the unit for anything trivial.

We would love to pay the support forward to other families by raising money for SSNAP, most importantly as a family, so Mark and I are attempting to run (and probably walk a bit! 😉) 7k, pushing the boys in their buggy, at the beautiful grounds in Blenheim Palace, a place we now love to enjoy as a family of 4 😀.

We would appreciate any donation, no matter how small, as each and every penny provides support to families, in so many ways when they need it most ❤ This year is especially important as it's the charity's 40th year! We would therefore love to raise £40 each for them 🤞

Thank you so much for reading 🥰 and helping us raise money for a charity so close to our hearts as a family x