Ciarán’s Bags

Aim

Weʼre raising funds to provide hospital bags & support to families going through their journey at Nottingham Neonatal Units

Ciarán’s Bags are hospital bags I have created to help families in The Neonatal Unit, I would love for each family to receive one on admission to the unit, one of the hardest parts of your journey so you know you are not alone.

So, a little background behind ‘Ciarán’s Bags’ and why it is so important.

August 2012, I had my second child Molly. She was born at 28 weeks, before this time I had never even heard of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit NICU. At the time I was working as a Healthcare Assistant at Queens Medical Centre “QMC”, Nottingham and I went into work one Saturday on a night shift and never left the hospital again until nearly two months later. I went into early labour that night and a whole new world opened up for me that I never knew existed.

Molly was born very premature at a minute into my 28th week of pregnancy, she was taken straight to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, a place which would become home to me for the next few months.

I spent the first three years of Molly’s life in and out of hospital and there were times when my eldest was also admitted, so as you can imagine I spent a lot of time in different children’s wards.

In April 2019 Ciarán was born at 34 weeks after a very turbulent pregnancy and a lot of in & out of hospital again. My children started to call QMC - My hospital. Ciarán had a rough entrance to the world and yet again I was entering the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

For the first year of Ciarán’s life I was back in and out of the same hospital, we also entered the world of Paediatric Intensive Care Unit; another world where you cannot explain unless you have been in there.

Parents get put into these new worlds every day and their whole lives are turned upside down.

The idea of ‘Ciarán’s Bags’ is to try & help a little in a family's time of need. They are filled with items such as toiletries, water bottle, coffee mug, slipper socks, snacks & some personal items. You don’t plan to go to these units so you haven’t packed a bag, you have nothing which happened to me a lot, so to be handed a bag like this would have meant the world to me.

I want to be able to just give a little back to the two units that saved two of my children more than once.

Each bag cost around £20 to make so we really appreciate every little bit of support.

We would love to provide every family with a bag along with providing other support to the units.

There are lots of way you can help, so please get in touch.

Thank you so much.

Sarah x

This project closed unsuccessfully on 8th November 2023