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Rare Disorder: My Little Girl’s Eating Me Out Of House & Home

September 8, 2014 by Laura Elvin

My Daughter Eats the Furniture: Read Nikki Cook’s story about her daughter’s rare disorder that gives her an insatiable appetite for carpet, sofas and cushions! If you would like to raise awareness about a rare disorder or something bizarre or unusual, contact us today. Read Nikki’s story…

When Nikki Cook’s little girl started chewing on the living room rug, as she crawled around on the floor, she thought Charlotte was just being inquisitive. Most babies explore new things by popping them in their mouths and Nikki had no reason to think Charlotte was any different. That was until she started to find lime green strands of material from the rug in her daughter’s nappies.

It was only then that she realised Charlotte’s habit was far from normal. As she got older Charlotte, now four, began to bite material from the sofas, carpets and her own cuddly toys in a bid to satisfy her bizarre cravings.

Her worried parents later discovered their little girl was autistic and also suffered from a rare disorder called Pica, which leaves her with a craving for inedible items. Pica is characterised by an appetite for substances largely non-nutritive, such as ice, clay, chalk, materials, dirt, or sand – and in Charlotte’s case fabric. It is particularly common in pregnant women, small children and those with developmental disabilities.

‘We always knew that something wasn’t quite right with Charlotte,’ Nikki, from Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, says. ‘We had a big green rug in the front room and when she was a year old she started eating it. I told the health visitor and she recommended we take the rug out of the room, so we removed it and thought that would be the end of it. But when Charlotte got too big for her cot and started sleeping in her own bed, she kept getting up in the night and gnawing at the carpet in her bedroom.’

‘I only realised she had been at it again when I changed her sheets and noticed patches of carpet missing under the bed. Then she began going into her older sister Evelyn’s room and doing it in there too.’

At first Nikki and her husband, Alasdair, 35, hoped it was just a phase but it soon became clear that Charlotte was addicted to eating fabric. The 42-year-old mum of two says: ‘We assumed it was just a stage Charlotte was going through. ‘But when it escalated and she moved on to the sofas and her cuddly toys we knew there was more to it. We had a similar problem with our other daughter, Evelyn, six, when she was a toddler. She had a strange habit of ripping the rough part of Velcro off of her shoes and toys.’

‘It started when she was one and by the time she was three she had grown out of it. We had hoped the same might happen with Charlotte.’ But Charlotte has showed no signs of slowing down and is now eating her parents out of house and home quite literally. ‘She has destroyed the sofa arms and all of the cushions are ruined,’ Nikki explains. ‘The suite cost £2,700, but Charlotte has ruined it completely. But we know she can’t help it. When it came to the carpets, we replaced them for ones with a very small pile, but that didn’t stop her, she still managed to nibble at that too. She also has tried to eat the TV remote and even her car seat.’

The couple first sought the advice of their GP in September, 2012, when Charlotte started nursery and her behaviour got worse. They were then referred to a paediatrician. But medics struggled to find a solution to the unusual problem, leaving Nikki and Alasdair fearing for the health of their little girl. One expert recommended removing all fabric items from the house – an option the family cannot afford.

Nikki, who works as a self-employed sports therapist, said: ‘We have tried everything to prevent Charlotte from eating fabric – including covering the sofa in cherry powder. ‘We even sat Charlotte down and told her calmly that she can’t do it or she will be sick, but that has no affect either. Nothing can stop her from doing it. If we try and take anything fabric off her she completely freaks out. She is constantly picking the material out with her teeth and swallowing it.

‘My biggest worry is that it will clog up and kill her. It’s a sensory need for Charlotte. She needs to have it. It’s an addiction – that’s the only way I can describe it. She can’t help it. Half the time she doesn’t even realise she’s doing it. She is digesting a lot of fabric and she hardly eats any normal food – surviving mainly on a diet of Shreddies, chicken nuggets and chips. She will have the very occasional strawberry or red apple, but hates all vegetables.’

All Nikki can do is keep a close eye on Charlotte, as well as vetting any of her toys and presents to check they won’t pose a danger to her – with small parts – if she starts to try and eat them.

‘We don’t know what the answer is. There is no magic wand,’ Nikki says. ‘All the professionals have told us is that if Charlotte gets a high temperature or goes limp to take her straight to A&E, so that’s what we are dealing with on a daily basis. We just have to make sure Charlotte is never out of our sight.’

Pica affects around 30 per cent of children with autism and can cause choking, digestive problems and parasitic infections. Experts say it can be caused by a mineral or iron deficiency but it is also classed as a mental disorder.

The family are now trying to raise awareness of the condition in the hope of finding a way to help Charlotte. ‘We want to make people aware of Pica because it is rarely publicised,’ Nikki says. ‘Some people make me feel as if Charlotte is a freak but she is my daughter and I would do anything for her.’

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Abused By My Mum

August 19, 2014 by Laura Elvin

Abused by my Mum: EVERYONE should read brave Victoria Spry’s heartbreaking abuse story at the hands of her adopted mother Eunice Spry. Our team of writers prepare heart-wrenching true stories for the magazines and newspapers every day, but this one had us all in tears. Victoria’s story serves as a stark reminder that horrific abuse and suffering goes on under our noses. Often victims are frightened or unwilling to speak out for various reasons. We all need to be vigilant and ensure that no victim suffers in silence.

As the bell for lunch time sounded I dashed out of the classroom. ‘Last one to the playground is a rotten egg,’ one of my classmates squealed, as we raced outside. I knew I shouldn’t have joined them, but I didn’t think it would do any harm – just this once.

But when I got home that evening my mum, Eunice Spry, cornered me. ‘Victoria, did you play with anyone at school today?’ she spat. ‘No,’ I fibbed, keeping my head down. She shot me a disapproving look and shrieked: ‘Don’t lie to me. I saw you with the other children.’

My heart dropped. I had been caught out. ‘I have a magic eye,’ she snapped. ‘I see everything.’ As she lashed out at me I cowered. I was only four years old, but that didn’t stop her from laying blow after blow on me – beating me to a pulp.

I had no idea how mum knew I had been socialising – completely unaware she had pulled up in her car earlier in the day and peered through the fence, watching my every move. But the walloping was all I needed not to play with anyone again. After that I did as I was told, terrified that if I stepped a foot out of place I would get a pummelling. I stopping taking part in games and activities and started to only speak when I was spoken to. At school staff picked up that something was wrong. The dinner ladies noticed I wasn’t being fed lunch like the rest of the children after I tried to pinch food from the other pupils’ lunchboxes.

To avoid anyone interfering and finding out how she really treated me mum instructed me to come home at lunch. I did as she said and made my way back to our house up the road on my break. But mum wasn’t there, so I headed back to school. ‘There was no one home, I haven’t eaten,’ I innocently told my teacher. She kindly made sure I had a school dinner. But at the end of the day she spoke to mum.

‘You shouldn’t have said anything,’ mum shouted later that evening. Behind closed doors she walloped me. The smack of her palm stung my skin and red marks appeared straight away. Then she prised her hands into my lips, pushing until my teeth cut into them. Defenceless, I sobbed.

But mum didn’t stop there, she grabbed hold of me and threw me down the stairs. I cried out in agony in a heap at the bottom. It wasn’t long before mum pulled me out of classes completely in the guise of ‘home-schooling’. But she never taught me a thing. Instead I became her personal slave – cooking, cleaning and doing all of the washing. With rabbits, ducks, geese, chickens, cats and a dog, I had the animals to look after too.

Eunice was my adoptive mum. She had taken me in when I was 18 months old after my birth parents were no longer able to look after me. I wasn’t alone in my suffering. Our house was full of children. Mum had two biological daughters, but their dad was no longer around. She then adopted another girl, Charlotte, just the year before me. And she also took in three foster children – two boys and a girl.

I was a traumatised toddler when I first arrived. I hadn’t ever been around other kids. I struggled to adapt and was slow to develop. Instead of nurturing me with love and patience, mum lost her temper and flew off the rails on a daily basis.

I don’t remember the first time she abused me – I was too young – but it happened when I was around two years old. One of mum’s natural daughters told me when I was older that the first memory she had was of me being held down.

I didn’t want to come off milk, but my mum insisted, saying: ‘She should be on solids by now’. Mum pinned me down. She prised my teeth open with a metal spoon. Blood poured down my face. Unsettled and struggling to adjust to my new home, I continued to wet the bed. Instead of soothing me, mum would rub the damp sheets in my face. She even tied me to the potty.

As I got older the abuse got worse and became more regular. While mum’s offspring attended private school, had ballet lessons and went horse riding, the rest of us suffered in silence. Her favourites – her own children, Charlotte and one of my younger foster brothers – usually escaped her violent outbursts. But she routinely beat, abused and starved my two other foster siblings and I.

‘You’re an inconvenience’, ‘Worthless’, ‘Your parents never wanted you’ – I had it drummed into me. Young and naive, I believed mum’s spiteful comments. She was obsessed with perfection and wanted us to look just like the Von Trapp family on the outside. On the rare occasion we were out in public together, people would often comment on how well behaved we all were. But the truth was we were absolutely terrified of putting a toe out of line for fear of what mum would do to punish us.

Treading on egg shells, she was a ticking time bomb, we would barely move or speak, petrified of getting told of – or worse. No television. No playing. No eating. The rules were strict and if we broke them… ‘Open your mouth,’ mum demanded, before pouring in bleach or squirting lemon washing up liquid down my throat. It was how she disciplined me for doing something she considered wrong. The cleaning products would burn my throat and they made my stomach churn. If I threw up, mum would often force me to eat my own vomit. She would sometimes make us sick if we had too much energy, saying: ‘That’ll teach you.’

Our time was split between a home near Gloucester and a farm house in Eckington, Worcestershire. It had been left to mum in a will by a man mum apparently cared for. The run-down farmhouse was surrounded by trees and away from prying eyes – we called it the ‘torture house’. Mum would pile us into the car and drive to the property.

‘Lie down,’ she would demand as soon as we got there. One of the children would be made to stand on our windpipes to stop us from screaming, and mum whip the soles of our feet with sticks. Gasping for breath, with each whack sent pain searing through my body. But the worst was yet to come. She would then force the sticks down our throats.

I clenched my teeth together to try and stop her from ramming the wood into my mouth. But she managed to prise my jaw open and I would retch as she pulled the branch back out – the taste of wood, blood and saliva swirled in my sore mouth.

Another of mum’s torture techniques involved her ordering us to lean with our backs against the wall for hours on end in an excruciating half-seated position. As our feet slipped forward under the pressure she would whip our toes until they bled.

Then when I was eight, a single chicken nugget went missing from the fridge. ‘Who took it?’ mum screamed, interrogating us all. ‘It wasn’t me,’ I croaked, knowing she wouldn’t believe me – even though I hadn’t seen it. When no one owned up, mum flipped. She grabbed me, stripped me naked and tied me up tightly with a rope. I whimpered as she threw me down with a blindfold over my eyes.

Locked in an upstairs bedroom, my younger brother had been tied up too. We quivered, freezing, for hours on end. Hours turned into days and days into months. We were occasionally given crusts of stale bread and water. When I wet myself on the floor, mum forced me to drink up my own urine. ‘You are weak minded Victoria,’ she would snarl. ‘It’s mind over matter’.

I did what I needed to do to survive. I don’t know how long my brother was there before he was allowed to go, but it was only three months later that one of mum’s biological daughters accidentally stumbled across me. She threatened to go to social services, so to stop her mum released me. I was able to put clothes on and eat again. I breathed a sigh of relief but I knew the calm wouldn’t last.

Mum enjoyed brutally torturing us and she had it in for me in particular. It was a miserable existence. I sometimes dreamt of running away. One day I scribbled down ‘Please be my new mummy’ on a piece of scrap paper. I thought about posting the letter through a neighbour’s letterbox in the hope that someone would rescue me. But I never plucked up the courage to send it. The note didn’t leave the house.

In September 2000, when I was 14, we were given an unheard of treat and taken on a family holiday with our grandmother to Pontins in Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. While I was kept indoors with the other foster kids, it gave us a brief break from the constant beatings. ‘This is for you,’ my grandmother said softly, handing me a Barbie doll. My face lit up. I had never owned a toy before and I treasured it.

With so many of us, we had to take two separate cars to drive there and back. On the journey home, I climbed into the car driven by one of mum’s biological daughters. But on the M5 we were involved in a horrific accident. A lorry driver – who was later convicted in court – smashed into the back of the car, while fiddling with his radio. Our vehicle buckled under another lorry ahead.

The crash instantly claimed the lives of mum’s natural daughter, 37, her body was mangled in front of me. While Charlotte, 16, was also decapitated. I was left hanging and pinned, watching my little brother, seven, – who also survived the smash – scream in agony. I broke my neck, I had leg fractures, a broken pelvis, hips, small of my back, both arms, legs, elbows, wrists and had internal injuries too.

After being rushed to hospital I was put in an induced coma for a month. But as soon as I woke up, mum blamed me for the crash. I had just opened my eyes when she held me by the throat in my hospital bed. ‘Tell me what happened,’ she whispered aggressively. ‘We stopped to go to the seaside on the way home,’ I croaked. I was asked if I needed the toilet, but I said I didn’t need to go.’

‘You killed them,’ mum yelled. ‘You didn’t go to the toilet and it’s your fault they’re dead. Why is it that my two precious daughters have died and scum like you still grace this earth?’ she cried. ‘The devil looks after his own his own, that’s why you are still here,’ she told me. I believed her.

While I drifted in and out of sleep, suffering horrific nightmares while I recovered, mum would tell me to ‘shut the f*** up’ as soon as the nurse’s backs were turned.

After the accident, doctors told mum I needed to be in a wheelchair for a few months, while I built up my strength. Back at home, mum turned into even more of a monster. I used my feet to shuffle along the hallways, but after being punished I stopped.

She once pulled me out of the wheelchair by my hair and kicked me around like I was a football. Two years down the line, when I was 16, and still in my chair, I was taken on a trip on a canal boat. My chair was leant up against one of the power buttons and it had accidentally been pressed down on it, until the battery had run flat. Mum went berserk, she grabbed a piece of sandpaper and scoured away at my face. My fragile skin ripped away under the sharp grain of the paper. Thick scabs formed on my face, but if anyone saw my injuries mum would tell them I had eczema.

She forced me to stay in the wheelchair for four years in a cynical bid to maximise the disability living payments she received. Eventually I suffered such terrible muscle wastage I was unable to walk. Every night I was made to crawl from my chair onto the filthy hallway floor to sleep.

I wished I had died in the accident instead and I prayed that somebody would put me out of my misery.

When I was 17, my 12-year-old brother – who was clearly favoured by mum – asked if he could go to Jehovah’s Witness meetings in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire. Mum was supposedly a devout worshipper and she allowed him to do as he pleased – but only if I went to watch over him.

For the first time in my life, I met people caring people. They were warm and welcoming. They noticed the horrific bruises and scars that I tried but failed to hide under thick clothes. Mum came under question from the group, but she blamed my injuries on an older step child, telling me to do the same. Eventually though the lies became too much.

I broke down, telling everything to a young couple in the group. Just before Christmas in 2004, after years of relentless abuse at the hands of mum, the pair helped to smuggle me out of the house.

Mum was all I knew, and like the other children, despite it all, I still couldn’t help but feel loyal to her. It took three weeks for me to build up the courage to tell the police, but I bravely reported mum to them. She was arrested and investigating officers scoured her two properties.

They recovered the bloody and splintered sticks she had shoved down our necks, as well as teeth knocked out in the process. Amongst the squalor they found the unposted letters I had written and forgotten about.

At Bristol Crown Court, Judge Simon Darwall-Smith told mum that it was the worst case he had come across in 40 years in law. Eunice Spry, now 70, was jailed for 14 years after a jury found her guilty of 26 charges, ranging from unlawful wounding, cruelty to a person under 16, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, perverting the course of justice and witness intimidation.

Finally free from her clutches, I set about making a fresh start.

I went to college to learn to read and write and enrolled on maths and English classes, before taking up a course in hairdressing. Then I completed a course in childcare and dedicated four years to working in schools, before my ongoing health problems – stemming from the abuse – forced me to give up work.

In spite of the horrors I suffered, I have miraculously flourished and I’m now engaged to my partner of five years. We have two Labradors, Berry and Noah, and have built a life together.

I’m a happy person. My mum didn’t break me. She might have ruined my childhood, but I won’t let her destroy my life. I love to laugh with my friends and to sit in the fields watching my dogs play, whilst I take pictures of the sunset. Every day I wake up, I continue to see the best in people.

But despite my freedom there is still a dark cloud lurking over my future. Not long ago I was contacted by the probation service. They warning me that mum was due to be released in July.

Year after year I was promised that she would be housed in the north of England – far away from me. But now it’s been revealed that she had applied to be housed in Worcestershire – the very next county to Gloucestershire and just 25 miles away from where I’ve built a life for myself.

A probation officer told me that mum has not been interested in anything in prison – she hasn’t taken part in any rehabilitation. She is coming out with the very same mindset she went in with. The officer told me she wasn’t supposed to let me know, but my mother has been paying people to do jobs for her, like tracking people down. They won’t say who, but I think it is me.

Mum has got hold of phones in jail and she can get on social networking sites. I know she is going to come out and play every game in the book and now she might be living just down the road from me. It’s heartbreaking. After all she put me through, I deserve to just feel secure. All I want is to just carry on trying to keep going the best I can. Why do they have to just slap her so close to me?

I asked why and I was told she requested it – the worst thing is it has been granted. If she comes anywhere near me I have friends now who will protect me – I’m not scared of her physically anymore. But I have got on with my life, and knowing she will be so close is awful.

Even now, I see the swish of a ponytail out the corner of my eye when I’m out shopping and it gets my heart racing, thinking it is her. I thought prison would break her, but I’m gravely concerned that it seems she is still playing the system, still controlling people, still getting her way. I wish her no harm, but I don’t want here anywhere near me and I never want to see her again. She is a psychopath and my worry is that being so close, she’ll manage to find out where I am.

Now I’m 28 and waiving my anonymity to speak out for the first time about the daily horrors I endured for 19 years before I managed to escape. I hope that my story encourages other victims of abuse to get find a way out of a bad situation and inspires them. I’m proof that you can turn your whole life around if you want to.

I want to set up my own charity to help abuse victims too and I hope to write a book about my life experiences one day. Mums are supposed to look after their children, to love them unconditionally and protect them from harm. But my mum was the person I needed to be protected from.

In years to come if I am blessed enough to have children of my own I know I will be a great parent. I will give them an endless supply of the one thing I was never shown growing up – love.

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We helped Victoria share her story exclusively with popular women’s magazine That’s Life (who featured the story over two editions), as well as a follow up story in Women’s Own and some national newspapers. We’ve also had a lot of interest from television shows like This Morning. Please share this story to help raise awareness of silent child abuse.

Miracle Baby Story… three of them!

August 13, 2014 by Laura Elvin

Do you have a miracle baby story to tell? If so, we want to hear about it. Magazine editors and readers love reading heartwarming and uplifting stories that give hope to others, especially involving miracle babies where there has been a happy outcome. Read Michelle and Gary Harding’s story – they struggled to conceive for more than a decade and you can guess what happened next…

Pushing the trolley around the supermarket, while doing my weekly shop, I couldn’t help but gaze at parents with their newborn baby. Nappies, wipes and milk formula spilled out of their basket as they stocked up on the essentials.

Strolling up and down the aisles, new mums and dads were stopped every few paces by admirers, who stuck their heads over the pram. ‘Isn’t she beautiful’, ‘She looks just like you’, ‘Look at those chubby cheeks’, they cooed, while the proud parents gleamed with pride. Everywhere I looked there seemed to be happy families.

Broody, I had wanted to be a mum for as long as I could remember. When I was a little girl my favourite game was ‘mummies and daddies’ and I would happily play with my dolls all day long. But for my husband, Garry Harding, 35, and I, our dream of parenthood felt like it would never be a reality.

Childhood sweethearts, I was 16 when we met, Garry was 17 and in the year above. We married in September 2005 and as soon as we tied the knot we started trying for a baby. We both had siblings growing up and knew we wanted a big family ourselves. With nieces and nephews we’d had plenty of practice looking after little ones. But month after the month the home-testing pregnancy kits came back negative.

‘Don’t worry, it will happen eventually,’ Garry would soothe reassuringly as I moped around the house. Eventually after two years we realised I wasn’t going to fall pregnant naturally and we sought the advice of our GP who referred us to the fertility clinic at Southmead Hospital, Bristol.

The process was long and we underwent test after test to see if they could discover why we couldn’t conceive – but medics couldn’t find anything wrong with either of us. As there was no medical reason to stop me from getting pregnant we thought we would keep trying. For almost a decade we had tried and failing to start a family. We even resigned ourselves to thinking it might never happen.

My friends had started having children of their own and every time one excitedly announced they were expecting and pulled out an ultrasound scan I couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy. But the niggling maternal urges wouldn’t budge and last year we decided to enroll into a NHS-funded treatment called intrauterine insemination (IUI) – which involved doctors selecting the fastest sperm from the man.

I had to inject my stomach every day to stimulate my ovaries, before the sperm sample was inserted directly into my cervix. Our first round of treatment in June 2013 proved unsuccessful. We returned for another round of IUI in September 2013. A few weeks later I held my breath and perched on the edge of the bath, pregnancy test in hand, to see whether we had finally conceived.

When a blue line appeared I burst into tears of joy. Garry heard me sobbing in the bathroom and from my reaction he immediately thought the worst. ‘We’ll try again,’ he promised, rushing in. But I shook my head and smiled, holding up the plastic stick. ‘These are happy tears,’ I whispered, in between sniffs. ‘I’m pregnant.’ Six weeks later I went to for a check-up scan at hospital.

Garry was desperate to be by my side but he had reached the World Masters darts competition so I encouraged him to go to it – even though it meant he was more than 200 miles away in Hull. Instead my mum, Lorraine, came with me to the appointment for moral support.

I had been curled around the toilet most mornings with severe morning sickness and the nurse told me she had an inkling I might be expecting more than one baby if I had been feeling so poorly. ‘Surely not,’ I said, brushing off her suggestion. But when she performed an internal ultrasound I had a surprise in store…

‘There’s one heartbeat,’ she smiled. ‘Oh… and another.’ Beaming, I turned to mum and she squeezed my hand excitedly. The nurse had been right. ‘Oh… and another,’ she chirped. Stunned, I welled up. We weren’t just expecting one baby – we were having three.

Mum had tears streaming down her cheeks too. Garry and I had waited for nine years for a baby and now three had come along at once. ‘Triplets? Are you sure?’ I managed to ask, trembling from the shock. ‘Definitely,’ the nurse replied.

She explained the pregnancy would be classed as high-risk. I would need to be monitored every three weeks to check all of the babies were growing at the same rate and developing well. By the time I left the hospital I had six missed calls from Garry. Still struggling to absorb the news, I rang him to drop the bombshell.

‘We’re having triplets,’ I announced. Laughing, he said: ‘Stop pulling my leg. How did it really go?’ ‘I’m serious,’ I told him. ‘We’re going to have three babies.’ I could tell Garry still thought I was joking, so I convinced him by sending him a video and picture of the scan. Stunned, he almost dropped his mobile looking at it.

After the initial shock slowly started to sink in, we began to get very excited about our impending arrivals. The 12-week wait to tell our friends and family felt never ending. We held a gathering at our house and Garry announced: ‘We’ve won the lottery – not just once, but three times over.’ Friends gasped when Garry told them: ‘Michelle’s pregnant and we’re having triplets.’

Knowing the heartache we’d been through they were over-the-moon for us. As soon as we were in the clear, we rushed out to buy a three-seater pushchair and changed our car so we would be able to fit the tots in. But when I was five months pregnant I was driving to my job as a pensions worker when a vehicle pulled out of a junction and ploughed into the driver’s side of my car.

A witness called the ambulance and I was taken to A&E to be checked over. Garry dashed to be by my side and we both breathed a huge sigh of relief when we were told the babies were all fine – if a little shaken up. But just three weeks after the accident and in my 24th week I started bleeding. I was warned that if it happened I would need to go to hospital for an injection as I have a negative blood type.

At hospital medics scanned me internally and found that my cervix was opening and preparing for labour. They worried the babies were about to be born, so I was admitted to hospital and placed on complete bed rest. Eight weeks later, at 32 weeks, I had a planned C-section on April 7.

Garry was by my side as our daughter Evie was delivered first weighing 4lbs 5oz. Millie following weighing 3lb 6oz and their brother Max came last at 3lb 12oz. We didn’t know the sexes beforehand so it was a lovely surprise and Garry seemed secretly very relieved that he wasn’t completely outnumbered by girls.

Our babies were popped into sandwich bags to keep their fragile bodies warm and they had breathing equipment placed on them too. I caught a glimpse of Evie, but I wasn’t able to see Millie or Max, before all three were whisked away to neonatal intensive care. As I recovered from the operation the nurses wheeled me down to see my babies.

The next morning I was able to hold Evie and later that afternoon I cradled Millie for the first time. Max was slightly poorly so I had to wait a few days before I could touch him. Garry and I couldn’t believe they were actually ours. After almost a month in hospital we were able to bring them home with us.

Now we have our hands full and our daily routine is planned with military precision to juggle feeds, bath time and cuddles, but I wouldn’t change it for the world. We had always wanted a family on the larger side, we just never imagined all our babies would come at once.

If you have a miracle baby story (or multiple babies!) and you would like to share your story, fill out the form on the right hand side of this page and find out how much you can earn. Your story will be in safe hands and nothing will be published without your consent. SWNS is the largest and most respected press agency in the UK. To learn more about selling your story, you can visit the Sell My Story page here.

Horrific Shark Attack Pictures

July 29, 2014 by Sell My Story

Shark Attack! When Sellusyourstory.com heard about Glen Folkard’s story, we couldn’t quite believe our ears. Glen was attacked by a shark whilst surfing off the Australian coast. The graphic and shocking details of his account are enough to make even the hardiest stomach turn. We helped Glen get his story told as an exclusive in Zoo Magazine and Real People Maazine. Read Glen’s story below…

The impact came from out of nowhere, like being hit by a speeding car. Then came the crunch of bone, a ‘popping’ sound and the sudden loss of weight as litres of blood poured out of his leg and into the jaws of the shark that had hold of him.

Lenny Folkard 44, had gone down to the surf to get some waves in after a particularly gruelling day inking his pals up at his seaside tattoo parlour in Sydney, Australia. Out on the swells waiting for a wave, the impact came. “The hit was real hard,” Lenny told Zoo, slamming his fist into his open palm so we get the idea. “It was like being hit by a boat or car at high speed. Then I’m in the water and the bastard’s got his jaws on my leg, tearing half my arse off.”

Lenny had been hit by a Bull Shark. Known for their aggressive behaviour and stalking the shallows, it had picked Lenny out as the ideal canapé. Their modus operandi is to hit hard and then start chomping. Rump steak.

Dragged under the surface, the beast did just that, ripping 2kgs of flesh from Lenny’s backside as it thrashed him about in a death-roll. “I felt the crunch of bone as his teeth struck my femur – the pain was unbearable. I thought I was going to pass out,” says the father-of-three. “At the same time I was thanking God he didn’t get me below the knee. That would have cost me my foot for sure.”

Along with most of Lenny’s arse cheek, the beast had taken a plate-sized chunk of surfboard with him, and the fibreglass had caught in its teeth. “He spat me out then and for a strange few moments we were just floating in the water staring at each other,” says Lenny.

It was a naked lunch moment for both man and beast when Lenny had the bright idea that he shouldn’t hang around waiting for the man-eater to blink first. In a moment where thoughts about death were foremost in his mind, Lenny was able to focus on living. Pulling on his leg-rope, he thrust the surfboard between them and dragged himself weakly onto it.

Shock and massive blood loss was happening fast and he was rapidly getting weaker. Hanging onto the board with what little strength he had left, he started paddling to shore which was over 40 metres away. “I was looking at surfers panicking en masse and heading for the shoreline and I remember feeling very lonely. I’ll never forget that moment. It confirmed what was happening behind me – but I couldn’t look. I just kept thinking of my kids. But the urge to look over his shoulder got the better of him.

In his wake, like the blood-bait off a big game fishing boat, was a 1ft wide, 20ft long blood trail thick in the water. “I thought, ‘Shit, he’s got my femoral artery. That’s it, I’m done.’” Then, about 10ft away the Bull shark surged through the bloody stream toward him. Starting to panic, Lenny’s voice could be heard from the shore. “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”

“I started cursing at the thing for trying to eat me,” he says. “I screamed so much, begging him not to eat me that my jaw hasn’t worked properly since.”

As he paddled frantically through the water, he noticed his friend, Nathan Visscher wading through the water towards him. But then Nathan slowed down. “He saw the shark behind me and the look on his face said it all: ‘that’s it for Lenny. There’s no point in me getting involved too’.”

Succumbing to blood-loss, loss of consciousness and what seemed like the inevitable, Lenny turned himself around on his board to face the music (cue Jaws theme). The half-metre long dorsal fin was even closer now and Lenny was still waist deep in water. Then, on his left shoulder came a thump. It was Nathan’s hand. His pal had come through for him.He grabbed hold of the board and began pushing Lenny through the surf toward the shore when a huge wave came in and threw them both onto the sand and to safety.

“I rolled off the board and onto my back and looked at the sky thinking, ‘I’m still here. I’m alive’. I found out later that the bastard was inches from having another go just as we reached the shore.”

Out of the mouth of the beast but nowhere near out of the woods, Lenny looked down at his leg as paramedics from all sides rushed to his aid. “I saw a huge flap of skin and realised he got me a beauty – then the shock hit me and I think great, I beat the bugger at his own game and now I’m going to die from a heart attack.” Paramedics gave him oxygen, tied a tourniquet around his thigh and jammed a thumb into his femoral artery as they worked to keep him alive until the ambulance arrived.

Lenny was thrown in the back of a meat wagon and rushed to the hospital where he spent three weeks cracking jokes on morphine in between six massive operations. Lenny lost over 4lbs of flesh but the cheek of it was he lost half his arse, making sitting down almost impossible. Inside the leg, his muscles are severed and nerves are just sticking out causing a lot of electrical jumping.

“I reckon I’m somewhere between 60-70 per cent of my old capacity,” he says. “Afternoons are the hardest. I fatigue from 12pm onwards and by 4pm I’ve got the shits pretty bad. This is from not being able to sleep properly. My eyes usually flick open at 4am and that grey bastard is there to greet me so I’ll get up and try to keep busy so I don’t think of that prick.”

Despite this, Lenny doesn’t hold a grudge against the shark that gored him. “He didn’t know any better, it was just a case of mistaken identity,” he says. “I knew then and there on that wave that I wasn’t at the top of the food chain anymore. But I’m not so forgiving of my new nickname: ‘Shark Bait’.

“All my mates want to surf with me now as there’s less chance of me getting hit again. But I won’t be surfing anytime soon. I tried it once and just kept seeing shadows everywhere. I saw a dolphin fin and nearly shit my wetsuit… not good! I’m going to ride a skateboard for a while, maybe.”

I became Shark Bait

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Slimming Story: Drop a Dress Size… or Eight!

July 21, 2014 by Laura Elvin

Sum Burr tells her slimming story ‘Drop a Dress Size or Eight’ about how she finally kicked her 24 stone bulk and slimmed down to an incredible size 8 dress size. We’ve published Sam’s story in various magazines, which has inspired hundreds of women to lose weight. If you would like to sell your own slimming story, please tell us about it by filling out the form on the right of this page.

To look at her enviable size 8 figure now it’s hard to believe that just two years ago Sam was a size 22 junk-food addict. After tipping the scales at 24 stone at her heaviest, Sam was warned by doctors that she would end up in a wheelchair by the time she was 30 if she didn’t lose the bulk that was causing long-term damage to her knees.

With a young son to look after and her wedding day approaching, the health scare gave Sam the inspiration she need to slim down. She says, “I used to think that eating as much of whatever I wanted would make me happy – but in reality I was miserable.”

The 28-year old got out of breath doing the housework and didn’t have the energy to play with her son DJ, two, anymore. “I’ve always obsessed with food. My parents were both bodyguards and so keeping themselves in top shape was something they took pride in. As a result my three brothers and I lived off hearty home cooked meals. But growing up with three boisterous boys meant that I would get involved with the all the fights, especially the ones that involved food. At dinner time we would argue over who could pile their plate the highest. I was proud to say I could always give the boys a run for their money when it came to eating the most.”

After being bullied for her weight throughout school Sam sought comfort in junk food and by the time she was 18, she had ballooned to 24 stone. She says, “I always accepted I was just big for my age but when I hit my late teens and discovered I couldn’t get away with wearing the skimpy dresses my friends were that my size really started to get to me.

“I put on a front of being the bubbly fat girl, but deep down I was seriously depressed.” On one night out with her friends Sam couldn’t believe it when a gorgeous boy walked over and chose to kiss her on the dance floor. She says, “I was thrilled. I never got any male attention. But afterwards he pulled away from me and shouted over to his friends, “I pulled the pig!” as they cheered him on. “I was mortified and spent the rest of the evening locked in the toilets in floods of tears.”

Determined not be the ‘fat friend’ any longer Sam cut down on the takeaways and chocolate treats and slimmed down to thirteen stone. With her new body confidence she finally plucked up the courage to introduce herself to boys and met her now husband Dave, 46, on a night out. But as their relationship bloomed so did Sam’s waistline. Cosy evenings in with a takeaway and weekly restaurant date nights saw the pounds Sam lost to slowly creep on once more.

When she fell pregnant with son DJ Sam tipped the scales at 16 stone. A few months into her pregnancy Dave surprised her by asking her to marry him. Sam says, “I was absolutely delighted when Dave proposed, but at the back of my mind I started thinking, ‘I don’t want to be a fat bride.”

After the birth of son DJ Sam’s weighed in at 22 stone. It wasn’t just the image of her in an XL gown that was causing Sam sleepless nights, being grossly overweight was also having a serious impact on her health too. She says, “My extra bulk was causing my knees to ache and give way. On three occasions I was admitted to hospital with the pain and even ended up on crutches.”

Sam’s GP gave her a stark warning that if she didn’t change her ways she’d be in a wheelchair by the time she was thirty. “That was the wake up call I needed,” she says. It wasn’t just about me anymore, I had my son to think of too.”

“I wanted to be a good role model for him and I was terrified of him picking up any of my bad ways.”

Sam’s habit of skipping breakfast would leave her ravenous by lunchtime and capable of eating well over the recommended calorie allowance thanks to her love of greasy convenience food. She says, “We lived on a farm so there was always plenty of bacon and sausages about. I was cooking a roast dinner with all the trimmings not once, but three times a week. Dave and I loved filling up on big portions. It was so easy to pile up the food and overeat when I was serving it out of animal size bowls.”

Instead of using living on a farm as an excuse to eat more Sam started to see it as a way to kick start her healthy living regime. She pushed DJ round the fields in his pushchair and as she developed her fitness began jogging up the hills with him strapped to her back. It wasn’t long before her home workouts started to make a difference to her waistline.

Sam says, “As the pounds started to drop off I discovered I could get into the kind of dresses I’d always dreamed of wearing. I used to flick straight passed the fashion pages of magazines nut now I love looking at what’s on trend. I no longer dread buying new clothes.”

Sam believes her transformation has also improved her relationship with her husband. She says, “He has always supported me through thick and thin but now we’re even stronger. When I was bigger I’d refuse to let him see me without my clothes on and in the bedroom I’d insist that the light stayed off at all times.”

Now she is a slim size 8 Sam is determined to keep the weight off. She says, “I feel so much more confident now. I feel like a new person and a better mum and wife to my boys.”

If you would like to read more about how to sell a slimming story to the national media, you can get in touch with our team or read our Sell My Slimming Story page.

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