Penelope Elizabeth

Hi everyone,

My name is Courtney and I’m the birth mother of little Penelope who was born at 28 weeks. At the moment we are finding the events leading up to Penelope's arrival and thereafter, have left us completely unprepared, stressed and anxious about the unknowns of what's to come and how we are going to get through the next 3 months, mentally, along with financially. While I’m still recovering myself from complications which brought on the birth, we are doing our very best for Jonny to continue working, as well as care for our 2 other child Mason (4) and Maddox (2) while giving Penelope as much of our time as possible.

Penelope's story started like this, Born 3 months early due to a sepsis infection that went into my blood & caused havoc on not only myself requiring hospital admittance (twice) but the infection had also travelled from myself inside utero to Penelope (in the womb and the outers) this causing preterm labour on August 9th and ultimately Penelopes birth early morning August 10th in logan hospital. Although being born at 28 weeks is not ideal, this ultimately saved both of our lives as it was going undetected by professionals. It was not something we were ready for however we are thankful the outcome wasn’t anything worse.

Today Penelope continues to grow and is stable only requiring a cpap (oxygen), 24 hour care and weekly scans/monitoring we know she is so strong and we can only hope for this time to go quickly so we can all be together at home.

Penelope is expected to spend atleast the next 6-8 weeks in the royal brisbane and womens NICU and another 3-4 back in logan hospital before her homecoming, bar any future complications. We are hopeful she will spend the lesser weeks but are aware anything at anytime can change.

This is where we hate to, but need to ask for some help. With the rising costs of fuel and general living, travelling to and from the Royal Brisbane hospital for the next 6 weeks wasn’t in our budget. We are currently in the process of RMH helping us with parking but all of this will take some time between home care, hospital visits and juggling general life as we try and manage the rest.

Everyone is struggling in some way in this time with living and expenses and it is so hard for us to ask for your help and support in this every emotional and stressful time but as much as we don't like it, we need help.

This go fund me will help us with groceries, rent, kindy fees for extra care when needed, fuel for travel, parking and more. This will hopefully alleviate some of the stress of Jonny having to work so much and will allow him to also be present with us during this time.

We want to thank everybody for there well wishes for Penelope and our family, the support our family and friends have shown us in this difficult time and also the wonderful staff, nurses and doctors who continue to look after our sweet Penelope at Royal Brisbane & women's hospital - no words will ever be enough.