One day in August.

This post is for week 25 of The Gallery. This weeks prompt is One Day in August. The prompt is in honour of three parent bloggers, Josie, Sian and Eva who are flying out to Bangladesh to raise awareness of the work Save the Children are doing to improve the lives of millions of children in this poverty-stricken region. They flew to Bangladesh on Sunday 29th August.

For this prompt, we were required to take a photograph on this same day. The photograph can be of anything, it just had to be taken on this day. I imagined photographs of children in the garden, maybe a picnic in the park. Unfortunately, I had to work on Sunday 29th August and I was there from 7.30 in the morning until 20.00 so I had little choice but to take a photograph at work, as it's already dark when I get home.

I don't really discuss what I do for a living on this blog, or on Twitter (no, I'm not an MI5 agent). It's not top-secret, it's just that I don't feel that it's appropriate and I have to be careful what I say so that I don't breach my professional Code of Conduct or confidentiality.

I am a Neonatal Nurse. If you're not familiar with that term, it means that I work on a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit and I look after very sick and/or premature babies. It's a misconception that we only look after premature babies. Term babies get sick too. I would have loved to have taken a photograph of one of our tiniest patients, maybe even just a tiny foot, but I need permission to do that. 

This is a Resusitaire. This is the first piece of life saving equipment a baby who is unwell at birth or preterm will come into contact with. Those of you who have had a hospital birth may recognise it, as one resides in the corner of every delivery room in this country. It serves as a platform for staff (hopefully a Neonatal team) to place a newborn and assess and administer life support (if necessary). In the unit where I work, we also use it to transfer the baby up to the Neonatal Unit.

Sunday 29th August was a busy day. We had two admissions arrive simultaneously. I took this photograph after one of the babies (born at 29 weeks) had been safely settled onto the unit. Believe it or not, the plastic bag is an excellent insulator. These resustitaires cost somewhere in the region of £20,000 pounds each. It's very unlikely that hospitals in Bangladesh have equipment like this, especially not in every delivery room. I very much doubt that babies born at 29 weeks in Bangladesh even survive. 

People complain about the NHS, but we really are very lucky to have access to such a good standard of healthcare in this country.

  

Now we are Three............

My baby is three. I can hardly believe it. Three years since I brought a pink wrinkly baby (with enormous tootsies) home. The first year went quite quickly, the second even quicker and the third...............well. Unbelievable. Here at the Nudie Palace, we had a wee celebration for the Little Prince in a Pirate stylee.

 No, we didn't only buy him a toothbrush for his birthday. But he was super excited about this anyway, after he nagged us every time we went to Waitrose about the 'Letric Spiderman Toothbrush'. The customary response was, 'You can have it when you're three' (because that's what it says on the back of the packet you see). Naturally, it seemed apt to buy him the sodding thing for his third birthday.

 This is his real present. A rather nifty Micro-Scooter. Watch your backs on the seafront, Grannies............

 Setting the scene for the party. Never let it be said that I don't pay attention to detail.

 The Cannon, built by the Talented Mr Nudie. It fired and everything.

 The target, a Galleon of course.

 A little Pirates den at the bottom of the garden.

Treasure chest cake. No, I didn't bake it myself. I'm good, but I'm not that good.

 Digging for treasure, well piratey bubbles if you must know, but the wee shipmates seemed happy enough.

 We be Pirates too 'Aaaargh', erm woof. Whatever....

 One very happy little piratey prince at the end of his party. Happy days. Still can't believe he's Three though.

Memories are made of this.......

This post is for week 23 of Tara Cains Gallery. The prompt this week is Memories. So many images I could have chosen that represent an important memory for me; photographs from my childhood; my time at university; my early adulthood spent living in London. All of these periods in my life have shaped the person I am today, but none as much as becoming a Mother. Every moment spent with my wee Prince is a future memory in the making.

The memories started before he was even born. The first glimpse of him on the scan. The first time I felt him move. All precious and stored away in those memory banks.

The images below are of moments etched firmly in my memories. The first time I realised I might be carrying a boy (we chose not to know the sex of the baby) was during my 20 week scan. A huge foot loomed out of the darkness at the bottom of the screen. 'There's no way that foot belongs to a girl', I had said to Mr Nudie. I was right.

When the Little Prince finally emerged, one of the first things I did (after I'd seen his dangly bits) was look at his feet. As I suspected, they were huge. They still are. This photograph has pride of place in our house because it represents one of my first significant memories of Motherhood.

The Talented Mr Nudie.

This time it's all about Mr Nudie, well all about what a bloody brilliant Dad he is to my Little Prince anyway. Not only does he have seemingly endless patience and the enduring ability to get up with the little darling at five-ish most mornings while I pretend to be asleep I mean, snooze. He is the inventor of all manner of cool stuff and games for little boys. I can't even begin to kid myself that I am as much fun to hang out with. Sorry, Little Prince. 

Mr Nudie is a 'Dangerous Book for Boys' kind of Dad. Always making stuff from bits and pieces he has lying around and foraging for beasties in the garden. All that's missing is a mad inventors moustache.......maybe that would be a step too far, despite his dedication to the cause.

Anyway, I want to share with you Mr Nudies piece de resistance. The Little Princes playhouse. It was borne from a small idea one weekend. The next thing, Mr Nudie's drawing proper fancy-pants plans and everything. It took him, with a little help from the boy just one weekend to build this.

It's the perfect spot to hang out, whilst creating a masterpiece.

Or just to chill and enjoy a little snackette.

This is the Little Princes space, and with it Play time has taken on a whole new meaning.

This post is for week 22 of Tara Cains Gallery. The prompt this week is Playtime. Don't forget to go and look at all the other entries.