Craig and I welcomed our 3rd baby, Hugo, into the world in November 2025. Unfortunately we got the devastating news at our 20 week scan, that Hugo had a congenital heart defect that would require open heart surgery once he was born.

His condition is called transposition of the great arteries; a condition in which the 2 main arteries of the heart were essentially the wrong way round and would need to be removed, swapped, and reattached in order to save his life. Hugo had his open heart surgery when he was just 1 week old and is now doing well thanks to the incredible cardiac teams at the Leeds General Infirmary.

Throughout what we can only describe as the most stressful time of our lives, we were supported in so many ways by the amazing Children’s Heart Surgery Fund (CHSF) and so Craig and I, along with a team of our siblings and partners, are taking on a gruelling 12km obstacle course at Leeds total warrior in June, in order to raise money to help them continue to support families who are going through a similar, difficult time to us. The CHSF provide essential family support, offering us counselling whenever we needed it. They provided us with free accommodation at the hospital so that we could remain in close proximity to Hugo whilst he underwent surgery and his recovery thereafter. The CHSF staff would regularly bring a wellbeing trolley onto the ward, giving us hot drinks, snacks, books and toiletry items and we also had a weekly food voucher from them which all helped us to actually look after ourselves too. They arranged family activities for us to get involved with like festive wreath making, as another way of helping us to look after our wellbeing and to feel some element of normality over the festive period with our other children, whilst also being there for Hugo.

Hugo was also presented with his own ‘Katie Bear’ from the CHSF - a symbolic teddy that shows the strength and resilience he has to get through all he has in his short life so far; officially making him a member of the club of cardiac warriors.

They don’t stop at family support either, they also provide life-saving medical equipment and vital ward resources to the Leeds Congenital Heart Unit and fund staff training, scientific research and also fund new clinical roles.

I’m not sure how we would have got through this time without the support of the CHSF and we would love to give something back to them so that they can continue to help other families going through the same.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page!! X

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