Vicki Cockerill - NICU MUM Blog

Shaun White in action. What TOF? Dear Shaun White, We watched you on TV,  your winning run before claiming your gold medal. Earlier in the day I had shown my son some pictures of you in action. Of you receiving your medals. I turned to him and told him that you too, had the same "special heart" as him. He looked up at me and back at the photo of you on the half pipe flying upside down through the air. I told him you were proof he could be anything he wanted to be, he could do whatever he wanted to. You may not feel a role model to other Tetralogy of Fallot sufferers but you are. Especially to us. I will never forget three years ago when sitting in a hospital bed down the corridor from my son who was fighting for his life in NICU. We were told Elijah had TOF. They didn't know if he would survive. He needed surgery, he may have future complications. I hadn't even heard of CHD but it was the life sentence that had just been handed to my son, to us. I shouldn...

Dr Emma Svenburg aka @mumologist has launched an amazing series called Just One Thing. I was invited to talk about my experiences as a NICU Mum and what I would want other new parents to know. Below is a snippet of Just One Thing- NICU.  'Things go wrong. I wish someone had told me it isn’t always picture perfect. It isn’t the snap shot you see on the front of the glossy parenting magazines. Have you ever seen a new mum, bedraggled from the birth and worried for her baby’s life looking at her child wired up to an incubator on the front cover? You can sometimes find yourself in a world no one warned you about. You can find yourself in the Neo Natal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) watching your fresh out of the oven bun fight for his life. This isn’t to scare you, but if I had been informed before I gave birth then perhaps this all wouldn’t have been such a shock. Perhaps if I was offered some help, some support I wouldn’t have broken down as much as I did. Why...

#thefaceofantidepressants This is the face of a mother. This is the face of a partner. This is the face of a friend. The face of someone you know. This is the face of antidepressants. There has always been a sense of failure surrounding medication for depression or anxiety, the fact they are derogatorily nicknamed ‘happy pills’ does not help. Someone close to me recently remarked that he did not know any female in their late twenties in close friendship circle and family that were not currently taking antidepressants. If that is the case, if we are all ‘secretly’, on them why is it such a big taboo still? Why is it not socially acceptable to stand up and admit, that yes, you are on anti-depressants? I have written before about the sense of shame of having to go on and off medication to be happy, to function. Especially as a mother, one of the hardest things you will ever have to do is admit that you need help and it took me a long time to accept the forms the help ...