Thursday 11 February 2016

Tiny Tickers #CHD

Myself and both of my girls have heart defects and both my girls had open heart surgery in 2009. You can read our story....Part One and Part Two.

My girls heart defects were not picked up during their routine scans.....If it wasn't for Ellie jamming her fingers in a door and the anesthetist picking up on the heart murmur who knows what would of happened.....My girls would not have lived past their late teens that's for sure!! 


Tiny Tickers is a small national charity that aims to improve the detection, care and treatment of serious heart conditions in babies....They were founded in 1999 by a world-renowned fetal cardiologist when she realised that many of the babies she was caring for could have been helped earlier.

One in roughly every 125 babies in the UK has a heart problem – that’s more than 3,000 newborns each year. But fewer than half of those are spotted during pregnancy and, in some parts of the UK, detection rates are as low as 1 in 4. That means around 1,000 newborns leave hospital every year with no one realising they have a life-threatening heart condition.


They want to increase early detection rates of cardiac conditions....Rates for heart problems being detected during pregnancy have doubled since they launched! They train sonographers to spot defects during routine pregnancy scans, support families with a diagnosis, campaign to improve service standards and generally raise awareness!

Early detection also means that parents-to-be can get the support they need to prepare them for the future meaning fewer dangerous and costly emergency admissions to hospital, fewer cancelled planned operations because of emergency admissions, and less strain on emergency transport services. 

Tiny Tickers works to ensure that every baby born with a heart defect has an equal chance to fight their condition, and lead a healthy and normal life.

With your support, they can achieve great things:

£5 Pays for them to help 3 families who have just received a diagnosis of CHD by sending them a support booklet giving them vital information and advice on what to expect from the coming weeks.

£10 means we they send pregnancy information packs to 15 mums-to-be telling how they can help their sonographer check their baby’s heart health.

£25 means they can send vital detection information to 40 baby clinics / GP surgeries.

£100 enables their experts to provide specialist on-site training for a sonographer.

£250 helps them set up a peer-to-peer support network by training a volunteer who can work with families who receive a diagnosis of CHD.

£500 pays for their trainers to provide a two-day specialist on-site training programme for sonographers in a hospital’s screening unit.

£1,000 could pay for a half-day training conference for up to 100 sonographers.

You can help provide a better start for tiny hearts. Make a single or regular donation to help babies with heart defects have a fighting chance.

You can also donate any amount up to £10 using your mobile phone. Simply text “TINY11 £amount” to 70070 and Tiny Tickers will receive 100% of your donation plus Gift Aid.


4 comments :

  1. Thank god your girls heart defects got picked up when they did Kim, such brave girls to have gone through all of that.
    And a superb cause to support, I will certainly be donating.
    Thanks for creating awareness x

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  2. I'm so glad your girls had the treatment they needed when they did x It's great that you are raising awareness of this charity.

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