Vicki Cockerill - NICU MUM Blog

Helping out at The Big NICU Family Photo F our years ago, I was sitting alone in a hospital side room after just giving birth. My baby was down the hall after being admitted to NICU and the echoes of the distant baby's on the ward were deafening. I was frightened, had no idea what was happening and was all alone. Lonely Alone with the fear my baby might die, alone that I knew no one who had gone through this. Alone with the fact I didn't know what the hell was happening. I had no one I could text, call just to ask what do I do? How should I feel? Should I be this angry? This resentful and bitter anger bubbled beneath the surface because I felt I was being robbed of my start to motherhood. I shut down, didn't want anyone to visit. If they did I shut myself away in my room and sent then down to NICU with my partner. I couldn't face the questions, the pity. Then during our time no one professional came to see if we were okay. A few leaflets here and there, a quic...

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 ...