10 May Jackie’s Charity SkyDive
Many of you will know me as Jackie from Identiti, I’m often your first contact with the company and guide you on the courses we offer.
Identiti as a company like to support a charity cause and this year as this is close to my heart we are doing a few things to raise extra money for the Keep Me Close Charity.
The first is my charity skydive on the 22nd May 2022.
As a parent any overnight stay in hospital with a child is very stressful. My sister after giving birth at 28 weeks last summer spent 94 long days and nights with “Lottie the Lion” in the NICU at Derriford hospital.
Please read Lotties Story below and if you can donate any small amount to help this charity fund housing for families to keep them close to their babies. I’ve reached my target of 2k but would love to raise as much as possible to give something back and thank them from all of our family for our miracle baby!!
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/jackie-langman1…
Lotties Story –
Lottie was born on 26/07/21 and made a very speedy entry into the world at 28weeks weighing a tiny 2lb 6oz, she was transferred to intensive care at 31 minutes old and we found ourselves thrown into NICU life for the next 3 months.
Lottie was ventilated and treated for sepsis and then was gradually moved to hi-flow oxygen support.
A cranial ultrasound showed that Lottie had a right side IVH (Intraventrical Haemorrhage) which she received weekly brain scans for to track the progression of her bleed and the impact this may have.
Lottie did well over the next few weeks and began to grow and we had just started to attempt feeding.
In September when she was 6 weeks old, Lottie caught a nasty virus which as a neonate baby with chronic long disease she just couldn’t cope with, she began to need extra breathing support. After a couple of days we received a call at 4am to say that Lottie had been moved back to Intensive care and would need to be put on a ventilator to take over her breathing, I was already in the car on the way to the hospital as I could tell things had been deteriorating throughout the night.
The next two weeks were the hardest of our lives and ones that we find hard to revisit, like the lion she is Lottie tried to remove the vent twice herself but she wasn’t strong enough to cope. On one horrendously awful day the emergency button was pressed for Lottie & I watched her stats drop away as they began to work on her, this will haunt me forever. After blood transfusions and the support of the ventilator for another two weeks she tried again to remove the vent and third time lucky she managed to stay off, moving on to C-Pap, then high flow and finally to low flow which she eventually came home on. She is such an incredible fighter (as are all of these babies) and we are so thankful every day that we have her and that she got to come home and meet her sister
The point of this long story is throughout the hardest times, the love, care and compassion the whole NICU team showed us was incredible and truly got us through. The Keep Me Close facility provides accommodation to be with your baby in the most uncertain & difficult of times and this is totally invaluable.
As Derriford is a Level 3 NICU, babies are transferred here from all over Devon and Cornwall & sometimes even other areas of the country if they are at full capacity, having this accommodation to keep parents with their babies at their time of need, when they live so far away is such a necessity.
We would love to raise as much as possible to show our gratitude & ensure this facility can continue to run and provide this support to so many families who like us will need it in the future
Thank you for reading & thank you so so much for all your donations already, we are so grateful xxx