In April 2013, our lives were turned upside down and, for some time, inside out.

Following a normal and uneventful pregnancy, what should have been the most beautiful event of our lives was stolen away in seconds as our son David was born not breathing and unresponsive. In seconds the room was full of people and then, just as suddenly, wasn't. Our little boy was gone; leaving us shell-shocked and, except for the Midwife, alone in a darkened delivery room.

After an hour of people in scrubs saying worrying things like 'seizures' and 'brain damage' our tiny little bundle was sedated, intubated, ventilated and inserted into a huge mobile incubator, itself inserted into an ambulance, and whisked off of the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit of Elizabeth Garret Anderson Wing at UCLH with sirens blaring and blue lights blazing.

More hours of tense waiting brought us news that David had been starved of oxygen during birth and could have suffered possible brain damage as a result, exactly how much brain damage they could not say as he was so young, but they had decided to put him through a course of Therapeutic Hypothermia for 72 hours, throughout which our tiny boy would remain sedated and ventilated.

For 4 tense days we watched him. Our little Smurf, blue skin with a white cap holding all the EEG monitor wires in place on his head and a tube in every orifice. We were sleeping and living at the hospital so we could be as close to him as possible, not able to touch let alone hold him, dying for that first cuddle.

Days went by, his brain damage prognosis got downgraded from severe to moderate and then from moderate to mild, we got moved from ward to ward, slowly the mass of machines and wires got less and less. A week passed, we got to pick him up and give him a much-needed cuddle. Things got brighter and brighter but we were still told we wouldn't know the full extent of his brain injury until he grew up "it could be years" they said. 

Now, 18 months on, those dark times are nearly forgotten. He walks, runs, climbs, talks, giggles, hoovers (no, really). He's hitting all his developmental targets and exceeding some. Best of all we've been told he's most likely to be normal, no brain damage at all (he's still mental though, but in a good way, like his Mammy) He's the most beautiful thing we have ever seen, but he could have been so tragically different without the intervention and swift treatment he received. 

Without the care, expertise and compassion shown to us by all the staff at EGA Neo-Natal ICU, from the receptionist to the nurses to the consultants, things could have turned out very differently for David. We'll thank them every day of your lives for fixing our little boy and giving him a normal life (at least until he becomes a teenager and wants to paint his bedroom black).

So, to say thank you to everyone EGA wing, we're running Tough Mudder on October 25th 2014. We're going to suffer and slog through 20km of mud and obstacles in the hope that we can inspire you to donate to EGA and help them carry on doing what they do so well.

Please take time to donate something to a very worthy institution. Without this charity the EGA wing would not be in existence today, and David would be a very different little boy.