Vicki Cockerill - NICU MUM Blog

Blogging for Tiny Tickers  For those who regularly read the blog, you will know that I have shared my story and raised a lot of awareness for the charity Tiny Tickers . They are a frankly amazing charity which is striving to help diagnose babies with undetected heart conditions and supporting families when they are getting that life changing diagnosis. We used their THINK HEART campaign when we went for a foetal medicine scan with Harlow to check whether he too, would have CHD or not. One of the most frequent questions we get about Elijah is why his condition wasn't picked up in the scans. Why it wasn't until 12 hours post birth that he was having cyanotic episodes and was admitted to NICU to be diagnosed. The answer? No one knows, it just didn't show, get picked up and actually we were told the majority of TOF patients are diagnosed post birth. Here he had a scan and was then diagnosed with Tetralogy of Fallot when we received the diagnosis it felt as though ...

Before Elijah was born, I didn’t have any experience with heart problems, other than the odd family member having a ‘dodgy ticker’. I didn’t really know what this meant or what could cause it. I certainly didn’t know what Congenital Heart Disease (CHD) was. Soon, that was about to change and I was going to become somewhat of an expert on the subject. When Elijah was born, 12 hours after birth he began having what we now know are called ‘Tet spells’, or, ‘dusky episodes’. Changing colour to a bluey/ purple colour and then regaining his normal pink colour. Upon his admittance to NICU he was diagnosed with a critical CHD called Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF). According to the NHS 1 in 111 babies born, are born with a CHD, this is also the cause of 1 in 13 infant deaths. Nothing was picked up on my scans, and we even had extra ones, all through the pregnancy we were told what a healthy heartbeat Elijah had. Never in a million years did we think there was something so wrong with our baby’s ...