[A]t just 15-months-old, Arrad Foot toddler Alfie Simpson is used to having his mum and dad Jill and Stuart Simpson dance to his tune but the other weekend, nearly 250 family members, friends and friends of friends all followed suit to raise a staggering £6,880.80 for Bay Hospitals Charity’s Bayb’s Maternity Appeal!
The cherubic bundle of mischief helped his parents and four big sisters – Katie (19), Hayley (16), Courtney (nine) and Jodie (eight) – welcome them as guests to the lambing barn at their High Farm home for a proper fundraising knees-up.
Trimmed for the evening, the barn’s makeshift dance floor was filled non-stop as Carlisle couple Dennis and Gail Westmorland played music that fused all genres to enable everyone to strut to their favourite stuff before tucking into food by Cath’s Country Kitchen and chancing their luck in the raffle and live auction, which saw Ulverston Auction Mart’s Ross Watson in charge of the gavel.
The money raised by the Simpsons’ barn dance will be used to furnish a parents room in the new maternity unit being built at Furness General Hospital. The room will be made available to those, whose babies are too poorly or born too soon to go home and so need looking after in the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU).
Plans drawn up show the private room as more hotel suite in style than hospital side ward but its purpose is to enable parents to be supported as a couple before leaving.
The mix of emotions they may experience on going home without their baby are all too familiar to Jill and Stuart, who welcomed Alfie into the world some seven weeks prematurely.
Jill had to remain in hospital in Barrow, while Alfie, accompanied by Stuart, was whisked by ambulance to the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. He spent several days there before being brought back to Barrow to spend the next seven weeks in SCBU before finally being discharged.
Jill said: “Despite his early arrival, Alfie is now as fit and healthy as any other child of his age but without the care he received at both Lancaster and Barrow, he wouldn’t be here today.
“We organised our sheep shed night to give something back and having had to endure the indescribable pain of being separated from Alfie so early in his life, we couldn’t think of anything better than to provide funds to furnish the new unit’s parents room.”
Jill added: “We can’t believe the amount of money the evening raised though. We are extremely grateful to everyone who came and to everyone who donated items for the raffle and auction, among them many local businesses that we are connected to as a family or through the farm.
“We are also very grateful to members of Lowick Young Farmers’ Club, who ran the bar for us. We agreed that bar profits would be split between the charity and the club but on the night, club members insisted on donating back their share, which was lovely.”
And it wasn’t the only act of generosity to help boost the total amount raised as last month, Alfie took his first lamb to Ulverston Auction Mart, where it was awarded a first prize and made reserve champion. Its original buyer then put it back up for auction so that it could make twice the price – a sum the Simpsons donated to kickstart their barn dance takings.
Sascha Wells, Director of Midwifery for the University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Jill and Stuart’s donation to the Bayb’s Maternity Appeal is a fantastic gift that is set to make a real difference. The parents room in the new unit, like the parents room in the current maternity unit at FGH, is a facility that enables us to help prepare new mums and dads, whose babies have to remain in SCBU, for the transition home.
“We are very thankful to Jill and Stuart for their enormous effort, generosity and kind-heartedness.”
The Bayb’s Maternity Appeal launched in February and now stands at £154,475.94 towards its £250,000 target. Bayb’s is funding “extras” for the new maternity unit being built at Furness General Hospital. These ”extras” fall outside the remit of what the NHS is able to fund but have been added to a shopping list of items, all designed to make the unit second to none in the country while giving it a real home from home feel for local families and for newborns, the best possible start in life.
To find out more about the appeal, visit Bay Hospitals Charity’s website at www.bayhospitalscharity.org
