The Telegraph

Angela Rayner: ‘My son was 1lb - I spent eight months in intensive care’

Labour’s shadow educations secretary speaks for the first time about the battle to save her son when he was born at 23 weeks

Angela Rayner has revealed that she spent eight months in intensive care with her baby son as she said confusion around her supposed two homes arose from her family trying to be by his bedside

The deputy leader of the Labour party, who has three sons, said her firstborn, Charlie, was born prematurely at 23 weeks and is registered blind.

Rayner, 41, said that the care that Charlie received demonstrated the importance of the NHS to her. She has had two more sons, Jimmy and Ryan.

“I actually lived on the hospital ward for eight months because Charlie was so premature,” she told The Sunday Times Magazine.

“You’ve just had a baby, you’re hormonal and you are trying to breastfeed and you’ve got all these machines around you and you’re trying to learn how to change a nappy because they won’t let you do it in the hospital.

She added: “Every day I was there, I watched people come onto the ward and they wouldn’t be able to walk or they wouldn’t be able to talk. And I just thought, ‘That could be Charlie. That could be Charlie in the future.’”

Rayner said that the experience had made her realise that “the NHS isn’t just there to stop people dying. It’s there to help people live. It’s there to help people have a good quality of life.”

The Times