My Story

Our little boy Griff was born with a rare congenital heart condition called Transposition of the Great Arteries and Coarctation of the Aorta ❤️. This meant the minute he was born he needed emergency care and was quickly transferred from NICU to PICU for respiratory and cardiac support. 
He needed open heart surgery when he was 5 days old and for a little while his situation was critical.
Fortunately for us, the teams at the Bristol Childrens Hospital were all absolutely incredible.  Griff recovered well post op and we were stepped down to Dolphin ward to continue with his care and recovery 🐬. We were given lots of support with feeding, giving Griff his medication and learning about how to manage his condition 🍼. They made sure we always felt involved in his care and allowed us to be the new parents we had just become, despite a different start and not being at home.
It was a difficult start to life for Griff and a challenging one for us- but when I look back I see a positive journey in a brilliant hospital 🏥. One that was able to give us an antenatal diagnosis with time to mentally prepare for what was to come, one that brought our son into this world in a calm and safe way (despite  emergency C section) and one where the staff took such good care of Griff, got him through one of the toughest paediatric cardiac surgeries and kept us informed throughout. 

The Grand Appeal is an amazing charity that does so much to support Bristol children's hospital 👶👦🏼👧. We will be forever grateful to a charity that supports the hospital that saved our sons life. 

A few things the charity actually do- just so you know what your giving your hard earned cash to:

*Family accomodation 🏡

*Medical research 🩻

*State of the art life saving equipment 🫀

*Music, play and arts therapy 🎨🎶

For Griffs 1st birthday you were all so generous and we raised an incredible amount for this amazing charity but I don't just want to stop there, hence why I am running the Bristol half, and later in the year the Cardiff half marathon 🏃🏼‍♀️ (Quite the challenge as I still can't really run down the road without stopping) but alas- I am going to do it anyway. And every time I loose my breath, or my knee starts playing up or I don't want to train because it's raining I think about Griff and all the other little brave warriors out there and I want to do them proud 

Thanks for taking time out to read this and donating what you can. Sloppy kiss from Griff x