I found out I was having Megan Aspinall just before Christmas 2000. I didn't tell anyone until after Christmas though, just wanted to keep it to myself for a while. When I did tell people they were over the moon, and we soon started to buy baby things. Her first scan was when I was around 17 weeks
pregnant; it felt magical watching my little angel floating round in my tummy. Her birth was booked in for July 5th 2001 and I couldn't wait.

I went into hospital at 8pm, ready to have Megan on the 5th. I was nervous, didn't sleep all night and was in a lot of discomfort for some reason; it later turned out that Megan was breach and in fact had turned that night. I was nervous as I waited to meet my little bundle of joy. Still the
secrecy about what sex baby I was having, the sonographer could never tell what I was expecting as she was always in an awkward position. I have never liked surprises much, but Megan was a much wanted and worth waiting for surprise.

 I was prepared for theatre at about 9.am, and then taken to theatre about 11 in preparation for her birth; I had chosen to be awake so it didn't take too long. At 12.16pm my little Princess was born. When I looked at her my heart melted. I already had two children but had never felt like this before. I waited for them to stitch me up and wanted to hold her. While in the recovery room I asked to hold my little girl, Her name was never going to be Megan, but when I looked at her the name Megan came to me and so she was named. I beamed with pride when I looked at her and didn't want any visitors as I didn't want to share her with anyone.

Today is Friday; I want to take my baby girl home. I have visitors in and out all afternoon. I just go through the motions, meet them and greet them. And just wish they would leave me alone. I get to about 8pm and just want to go home. I get ready to take my baby home. I get myself ready to go home; the nurses fetch the doctor, who won’t let me go home as I had had surgery only yesterday. I feel alright and assure him I will be ok when I get home, but he won’t let me go home, and tells me that I shouldn't be taking my baby out in the cold and wet night. I call my family and tell them to come get me as I am coming home. The doctor agrees for them to come in and talk to me. My family comes in and the doctor tells them he will let me out on Sunday if all goes well. I remember feeling let down. I just want to take my beautiful baby girl home to protect her.

 Megan and I came home from hospital today. I have waited for 3 days to bring my little princess home so as not to have to share her with anyone. We settled in nicely and all appeared well. She is like a dream come true, a perfect baby, so contented. All I can do is look at her and want this to
last forever. At last I am a mother. This is my baby!

I take Megan to town today, I didn't know what sex baby I was having so I am quite excited to be going to buy her little girl clothes. I wait for the Midwife to come in then sneak out. I feel good so I guess an hour in the local shopping centre won’t hurt anyone. Megan is all snuggled up in her new
pram, so I can’t see any harm in taking her out. She takes to the first outing quite well. She gets quite spoiled, and I am in my glory shopping for my baby. I go and get a few bits for the other 2 so as they don't feel left out. Even to this day if I buy for one child I buy all 3!

I take to being a mother of 3 better than I thought I would; although the other two remain Daddy's children. Megan remains to be my child. I lie awake at night and know the feeling that a mother should have when she has her first child. Although Megan is my third child, this feeling is very new to me.
I pray that nothing or no-one will hurt her, but deep down I get the feeling she won’t stay very long. I still to this day don't know why I think this, but it’s always there. I can never see her going to school, or getting her first pair of shoes. And I can’t seem to shake it off. I share my feelings, but they are dismissed as being over protective. I don't even want to take her out and share her like most mothers do when they have a newborn. I want to keep her all to myself.

 I take Megan on a trip with the other two to a theme park, The American Adventure Park. I know she is too young, but I can’t leave her at home, this is a family trip. She spends the day in and out of her buggy. I show her all the sights. I remember her looking at me and thinking you have no idea what I am showing you! But the fact I have her with me means more to me than anything. Haydn and Rhianna enjoy themselves.

On the way home Megan falls ill. I try and feed her and she has some sort of attack where she is struggling to breathe, someone said she had taken her milk down the wrong way and it was quite common. I am glad that this episode was seen by someone and she managed to ease my fear that there might be something wrong with Megan. I had taken her to the doctors about these episodes, but the doctor said Megan had reflux. Now someone had actually seen an episode and said the same thing. I was put at ease, perhaps a little too easily. I gave her the medicine that the doctor had given us for reflux and she seemed to calm down. This further adds to the easing of my mind that the medicine is working. I hate the fact to this day that I allowed my mind so easily to be put at ease. I had visited the doctor with Megan numerous times, I trusted them with what they were saying about her. I still don't know why.

I leave Megan with a friend, Jenny, so I can go into the shopping centre and get my 2 children uniforms for school. I can’t seem to get her to drink and leave special instructions with Jenny to try and force food into her. Jenny herself has a child, so she is quite capable of looking after a child and has looked after the other two previously.

I return home a couple of hours later and Jenny tells me she has been golden. I knew she would be though. My perfect angel, although she couldn't get her to drink her bottles for love nor money she said. Her little boy was brilliant with Megan and was so gentle with her. I say thank you for having her although she was thrilled to be looking after a little girl.

 24th August I get up today determined to find out if my baby girl is alright. She is still in bed at 10am and hasn't had a bottle for 8 hours. I get my two children ready for summer school and ring the clinic for advice. I speak to a health visitor who tells me that my baby needs to see a doctor. I call the GP and he sees her. He tells me there is something wrong with Megan but he doesn't know what it is. So he sends her to the local hospital for further tests. Once there they say there is nothing wrong with her and want to discharge her. I ask them if I can feed her and they say yes. I ask them to watch what happens when I try to feed her and then it all goes wrong. Her SATS dropped through the floor and they admit her to ICU. They do lots of tests and come to us later on and tell us they suspect that she has something wrong with her heart.

Friday evening the doctor comes to me and tells me that she thinks Megan has got a hole in her heart that needs mending. I am not to worry and that they are just doing a heart trace now to see what’s happening. They leave me in the dark about everything until she comes back to me and tells me she needs transferring to Birmingham ASAP. I later find out that Dr Miller was worried as soon as he saw the trace. We spend a restless night with her on ICU and she appears relaxed and sleeps well.

25th August Megan is transferred today to Birmingham for further investigations. After about 4 hours of different tests the doctor takes me to a room and tells me that Megan is seriously ill and in order to survive she needs an operation. She has a rare heart condition - ALCAPA (Anomalous origin of the left coronary artery arising from the pulmonary artery) it is a rare but serious congenital anomaly and surgery is her only hope. However they have no ICU beds here so they look for a different hospital that can take her. They find The Glenfield in Leicester can take her, so is transferred again. I have to leave my daughter for the first time in 7 weeks as she had to go alone in the ambulance as she needed so many medical staff with her. Two staff members from The Glenfield arrive at the hospital to get Megan; she is wired up to all sorts of machines and is put into a transporter ready to be blue-lighted to Leicester about 50 minutes away. I travel ahead of her so as to be there before her so she isn't alone with strangers.

Once at The Glenfield they do their own investigations - an angiogram is one of them and I again have to leave my baby as they think it is for the best. The doctor comes to me and asks for a blood test then they sit me down and tell me she does have ALCAPA and he thinks it is a little bit more severe than first thought. However he has booked her into surgery tomorrow morning at 7am. I spend the night by her cot and just feel like everything I have in the world is being slowly snatched away from me. I look at her as she sleeps; I ask myself does she know I have failed her? She seems oblivious to the commotion she is causing and the interest in her condition amongst the medical staff. The surgeon, Dr. Hickey, tells me that getting her through surgery at such a young age is a risk in itself; he is as honest as he can be with me. He tells me she is very ill and has suffered what amounts to a massive heart attack. I ask him how I miss it; he says it is hard in infants to tell they are having such attacks. I assure him that I did think something was wrong but she wasn't presenting in any way with blue lips or anything really out of the ordinary, then it comes to mind the attacks of COLIC!!!!! I ask him about this and he tells me this is it and goes to tell his colleagues. I can tell him all the times she had colic and he says they were all slight attacks that mounted to severe trauma to her heart. He assures me I did everything I could have done, so why do I feel like I have failed my baby? I did take her to the doctors about 18 times during her 7 weeks at home. Dr. Hickey tells me that in a lifetime a GP may never see a case of ALCAPA therefore they don't know what to look for as it is so rare...1 in 300,000 babies born with Congenital Cardiac Defect, have ALCAPA. But my main issue right now isn't looking for someone to blame, it is making sure my baby gets the surgery she needs and surviving it.

Megan is in Surgery today 26th August, for nearly 8 hours the longest 8 hours of my life. Her surgeon looks tired and worn out. He comes to find me in the parent's waiting room and tells me she is alive. He said she was on life support or ECMO as it is know and to be prepared for machines.

But nothing prepares me for when Megan comes back from theatre she looks so poorly, so drained and so fragile. She is hooked up to the ECMO machine. This is her life support system and does the job of the heart and lungs to give her heart and lungs a rest. My heart could break for her.

The doctor tells me that Megan is so poorly and that her heart is more damaged than first thought from recent heart attacks. He tells me that her one side of the heart is now muscle. This meant nothing to me till i started to research this. (Once the heart has turned to muscle there is no reversal process and death is imminent) Megan is stabilized and for the next few days appears to stay stable. She has more drugs in her than I have ever seen, they are pumped into her through a driver...every few hours or so the driver goes off to work and pumps whatever they are into her. But right now I don't care,

I sit and listen to the rhythm of the drivers and machines bleeping and just pray for her to be ok. She has an excellent team around her and thank God for each and every one of them.

The doctor tells me today that Megan has taken a turn for the worst and that I must decide whether to baptize her or not. There are chinks in the ECMO machine and they tell me this isn't a good sign, it is a sign something isn't working properly. I pray that it isn't serious.

 I decide to have her baptized and the hospital arrange for this to be done. My brother Nant and his wife Sarah are her godparents, and so Megan was baptized on 29th August 2001. Later on after she is baptized she appears to pick up a little and I pray that the miracle I have prayed for is here. She remains critical but stable until the following Tuesday. I remember it being a beautiful sunny day, every time I looked out of the window there was the beautiful blue sky. The sun shone down on Megan and she shone. My sister-in-law commented on how much like Rhianna she is. She is just beautiful.

I stay with her throughout the night, just stroking her hair and talking to her. I had bought her a bear with her name on from somewhere and this was on her bed often used to prop up the wires going into her neck from the ECMO machine. I wiped her face and put water to her mouth using a sponge, but to be honest the wires scared me, they had bought her round a little bit more for me - making her more aware of her surroundings and of me, she looks so beautiful. This period of bringing her round isn't such a good idea though as she can fidget a little and this makes the ECMO machine play up, so he comes to tell me they have to sedate her again just so the machine can work. I agree. I just want the best for her.

My little boy wants to see me so the hospital arranges for him to come stay with me overnight in the flat they let us stay in. Megan appears well and after talking to the doctor I decide to go to bed early with my son. Before I walk out the door I walk to a nurse and say to her - come fetch me when
you need me.

To this day I don't know why I said it to her and she was shocked as well. I take my son to bed at 9 – 9:30pm and by midnight a nurse at the door telling me I am needed. I get dressed and the nurse arranges for one of the nurses off ward to come and sit with my son until someone comes to take him home. I go into the PICU and they meet me at the door and take me to a room, there are about 8 of them waiting for me to go in the door. They seem to pounce almost straight away. I want to see my baby, they tell me they need to talk to me. The doctor tells me that she has collapsed and that they need to open her up to see what’s going wrong, she tells me that she doesn't think there is any hope either way and I should consider turning off her life support. The decision is mine, and she advises me in her medical opinion what should be done. It is up to me in the end but if I can’t make a decision then the hospital will make one to the best of their knowledge. There was always a risk whilst on EMCO that she would have internal bleeding, multiple organ failure or other complications. I have to decide whether to let my baby go in peace or be opened up again. My father and brother come to take my son home, and they pop in and see me and to see Megan one last time. I spend some time with Megan; the staff is very good and keeps their distance. I talk to her and I promise to go with her if she leaves me, I give her permission to leave me if she wants to go. I tell her I love her and always will. The pain in her face is unbearable. I decide to let her go. I still don't know to this day if this was the right decision. They switch off her life support and she slips away into the night. I watch my daughter become an angel and I don't know what to do. I spend the night with her, got her dressed for the first time in 2 weeks, wrapped her up and sat nursing her in a chair for hours. I laid her in her crib to sleep comfortably. For the first time in 3 weeks my little girl looks free from pain.

 The doctor on duty that morning arranges for us to meet the coroner to see if he would like a post mortem done on Megan, and if he does she has to stay there, if not I can go and register her death and have her certificate done so has not to have to come back. I beg them that they don't cut her
anymore and the doctor takes this plea to the coroner who decides he is satisfied Megan died as a result of ALCAPA. Her death is then registered in the district of Leicester and we get the permission to have her funeral. I had asked my dad to arrange to have Megan picked up ASAP as I didn't want her left here all alone, so far from home, the funeral home tells me he needs this slip of green paper and I promise to drop it in as soon as I can or my father will.

 They had offered for me to take Megan home myself but they would never have got her back. I would have taken her home and never let her go. So the best thing was for them to go get her. I finally decide to go home at about noon; I kiss my daughter goodbye and ask the nurses to look after her until she is collected. I don't know what to do as I have never lost anyone before. My brother comes to collect me and as I leave the hospital I know I have just left part of me in there with Megan. A part of me that I can never get back, she will take it to Heaven with her. I drop the green form into the funeral home on the way through and tell him I want her picked up ASAP. He assures me it will be done tomorrow. I tell him I will go and discuss things with him then.