We are each walking 35 miles in January to raise money for Ward 35 - NICU at the RVI through Tiny Lives because we want to make sure Tiny Lives can support other babies and families like they did for us.

On August 10th our little boy Archie entered the world and immediately needed emergency respiratory assistance in the operating theatre. From there Archie was taken straight to NICU where he received treatment for respiratory distress via a ventilator, CPAP, high flow and low flow oxygen. Archie was very sick and for this time was treated in the most intensive bays, with one to one care 24/7 as a minimum. He was fed via feeding tube and underwent many scans, xrays, IVs, cannulas, blood tests... the list goes on. We didn't get to hold him or see him open his eyes for a few days but when we did it was the best feeling ever.

Archie made a recovery quite quickly to our surprise at this point and spent a day in the postnatal ward with me, however there was a pretty scary incident with his breathing and Archie was readmitted to ward 35 overnight, he stayed there for the next 11 days receiving ongoing treatment before he was eventually discharged and allowed home.

Unfortunately Archie ended up having another scary episode with breathing at home and he was readmitted two days later for another 8 days. During this admission he was taken to theatre and finally diagnosed with a rare form of Laryngomalacia. Thankfully he is now making great progress to a full recovery, hopefully without surgery! We feel so lucky about this, he's shocked all the doctors and nurses with how much he's turned things around!

Tiny Lives helped us so much through this very difficult time and so we want to raise money for Tiny Lives and Ward 35 who we owe everything to. We have had support from them with: counselling, car parking costs, making our stay more comfortable, providing us with ways to bond with Archie (despite him being in an incubator), the ability to have text/video updates when we couldn't be with him (genuinely the only way I could get any sleep!) and just generally being supportive beyond words. Tiny Lives also support babies and families post - discharge and of course support families who aren't as lucky as we have been with Archie's recovery. We want to give back so that Tiny Lives can continue supporting babies and families on the unit like they supported us ♥️