‘My heart is broken because I miss my mummy so much’.

One of the hardest situations I had to deal with during my son’s vein of Galen journey, was being separated from my first-born son who was three at the time. He had to stay with family members most of the time, which he did enjoy, but after a while he just wanted to be back home with his mum, dad and baby brother. He often came to visit us at the hospital and it was awesome that GOSH had so many activities to keep him entertained. He loved coming there as he took this as play time and he obviously got to see his family, but it did start to affect him negatively.

 He was sad, although he understood that his brother had to be looked after, he didn’t understand why we couldn’t all be together. We had accommodation whilst our son was admitted but some of these accommodations did not facilitate children. It was always hard to say goodbye to him and one night, he sent me a voice note from his Dad’s phone telling me ‘My heart is broken because I miss my mummy so much’. 

As I played this voice note it surely pulled on my heart strings and I had a great big lump in my throat, I really wanted to cry but held it together, the nurse who was near me, over heard the message and she got so teary and said that it made her want to cry.

 I really felt guilty that I couldn’t be with my first born, I couldn’t go to his school plays, and was just missing out on his day to day life. I felt as though I was choosing between my children. This is the situation we were in and we just had to deal with it, I explained to my son what was happening and why as many times as he needed to hear it, I told him I loved him, and told him we would be home very soon.

I was sooooooooo relieved when we were introduced to ‘The Sick Children’s Trust’ (http://www.sickchildrenstrust.org/), they provide high quality ‘Home from Home’ accommodation for families with sick children in hospital. This place was a God send, we could stay there with our first born, and it is beautiful. It really was a ‘Home from Home’, equipped with everything that you would have at home. Here we got to spend more time with our son, it was literally minutes from the hospital, so we were always in reach. We are so grateful for such charities who do such amazing work and change people’s lives, it certainly benefited us and our family and took some weight off our shoulders from what we were going through. It also gave us the opportunity to connect with other families who were staying there, we were able to share our stories and encourage one another.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank everyone who works at the ‘Sick Children’s Trust’, all the staff that were there to help us when we stayed Rainbow House. I also want to encourage everyone reading this post to go and support these charities who make such a difference in people’s lives when it is most need .

The ‘Big Chocolate Tea’ is coming up, it is one of ‘The sick Children’s trusts’ biggest annual fundraising event. ‘Ideal for chocoholics, baking lovers and tea guzzlers!’. To find out more email bigchoctea@sickchildrenstrust.org or call 02076384066.