Ursula Fuller, who gave birth to baby son Tommy last December, expressed her heartfelt gratitude to health workers at the Allen Ward in Royal Belfast Hospital for Sick Children. But the 37-year-old from Glengormley pointed to the need for greater availability of the strips of material which keep oxygen and feeding tubes secured to his face. She believes they should be sold in shops and pharmacies and wants to normalise conversations about babies who are in need of tubes for oxygen or food.
When Tommy was born his initial health challenges came out of the blue for mum Ursula. “It was my first baby so I wasn’t sure, but he kept crying and crying and crying, he wouldn’t sleep, he kept vomiting and I was wondering how other people cope if this is what it’s like,” Ursula told the “I thought there was something wrong, and then people were telling me it could be reflux or this or that, but at seven weeks I brought him down to the doctors. “I said to them there must be something wrong, maybe I’m eating something and he’s allergic to it because it’s the only thing I could think of.
” During a check-up it was found that Tommy had a “really big heart murmur” and he was therefore referred to the Belfast hospital. Doctors were concerned about his breathing and colour, before Ursula informed health professionals that he had been breathing with a “squeak”, had a grey complexion and his skin was mottled. An examination discovered that Tommy had a hole in his hear.