Tiny Tickers raising awareness of early heart defects detection

If you remember last year I was sharing Tiny Tickers posts and as the cause is close to my heart I'm sharing it with you again this year.

"National Heart Month is in February and we at Tiny Tickers, the baby hearts charity, are asking you to support Heart Week between 7th - 14th February 2016. Heart Week is a chance to join together 

to help babies born with serious heart conditions by raising vital funds and awareness.
             
Tiny Tickers is a small national charity that aims to improve the detection, care and treatment of congenital heart disease (CHD) in babies. Tiny Tickers provides specialist training to health professionals and sonographers so they are better equipped to identify a heart defect during a pregnancy scan. We support parents and families dealing with a diagnosis, and we raise awareness
of heart defects in babies so that parents know what signs to look out for.

When heart problems are detected during pregnancy, babies get treatment from the first possible moment- and early detection is shown to greatly improve their chance of survival and long-term quality of life, and lowers the risk of side-effects of heart failure such as brain damage.

Heart Week will help raise vital funds and awareness for the 1,000 babies who are sent home from hospitals every year with an undetected heart condition. 

Martha’s condition was thankfully picked up during pregnancy. Her story perfectly explains how lifesaving early detection can be. Meet Martha here. 

                          
If you are worried your baby is one of these 1,000, these are the 5 signs that will help you protect your baby.
Think HEART points to a range of symptoms that, although non-specific, may be signs of an underlying heart defect - reducing oxygenated blood flow and needing urgent attention:

• Heart rate: too fast or slow? (normally 100 to 160 beats per minute)
• Energy & Feeding: sleepy, quiet, floppy, too tired to feed or falling asleep during feeds?
• Appearance: a pale, waxy, dusky, blue, purple, mottled or grey colour may mean that not enough oxygenated, red blood is getting to the body (normal oxygen saturations are 95-100%)
• Respiration: breathing too fast or slow? (normally 40-60 breaths per minute)
• Temperature: cold to touch - particularly hands and feet?

To get your free Heart Week pack, including your Love Hearts 'Guess the Number of Sweets' game, REGISTER HERE.

Tiny Tickers- let's raise awareness of early heart defects detection

Couple of weeks a go I was contacted by the Tiny Tickers charity representative who asked me to help spread the word about them.

As a person who had mitral valve prolapse I understand how important it is to be aware and treat the illness at the right time. 

"The condition I had is deemed to be the most common heart valve abnormality having said that as many as 1 in every 125 babies in the UK has a congenital heart defect. Only one third of major heart defects are spotted during pregnancy, and another third are picked up in standard newborn hospital tests.

Terrifyingly, that means around 1,000 newborns are sent home from hospital every year in the UK with no one realising they are suffering a life-threatening condition.

Tiny Tickers is a small national charity that aims to improve the detection, care and treatment of congenital heart disease (CHD) in babies. 

Tiny Tickers provides specialist training to health professionals and sonographers so they are better equipped to identify a heart defect during a pregnancy scan. We support parents and families dealing with a diagnosis, and we raise awareness of heart defects in babies so that parents know what signs to look out for.

When CHD is detected during pregnancy, babies get treatment from the first possible moment – and early detection is shown to greatly improve their chance of survival and long-term quality of life, and lowers the risk of side-effects of heart failure such as brain damage.

Here is how you can help

To get your free Big Tick info card, order here!

Read about Robbie's story here".

31 weeks appointment with a midwife

Last Thursday I had my 31 weeks appointment. That was one of the quickest appointments I had but I had to wait 30 minutes for midwife to finish off with the previous lady, I know circumstances can be different. 

As last time I was worried with my bump measurements she measured me few times to make sure all is correct and said that I measured slightly more for my weeks, which is weird as I have one of the smallest bumps in the world. 

As you know I have joined C&G Baby Club Community and as I chat to other mums-to-be and read about their experiences with midwives, mostly not so positive ones I now started to be more skeptical towards what midwives say. For instance, I have asked her about my baby's position, she said that baby is head down when though she used doppler to check heartbeat said that baby is actually all over the place, well that's not very helpful! I'm so happy that we booked a private scan for this Saturday and sonographer will tell us everything about our baby. 

Then she weighed me and said that I lost weight since booking appointment, I actually lost weight even more since then, they just didn't monitor it at all. But again she wasn't worried and said it's all due to me exercising, she actually looked relieved that she didn't have to do anything about it as I came up with an answer for her.

Then she said that we will discuss baby sleeping, by that she actually meant that she will quickly mention that after baby arrives they will asses sleeping arrangements, no co-sleeping, bed should be by my side and gave me Lullaby Trust booklet as it has all needed info. Extremely informative discussion! And I was surprised why my very first midwife ticked boxes in discussed sections as if we discussed it and we never actually did.

I started thinking that with useless midwives like this one and previous ones I could make a better one, shame I don't want to be a "forever student".

I really think I'm wasting my time with these appointments and not learning anything new, I have learned much more by reading comments, blogs and participating in chats with other mums (to-be) online, that's a shame that midwives don't want to really perform, but at least everything is going well in my pregnancy!