A Picture tells a thousand words.

I want to show you a photograph. It was taken in 2005, before everyone had digital cameras, and was actually taken using a Polaroid camera.

I must apologise for the state of the copy, but I took it under artificial light.

This is a photograph of me, taking my two girls for a walk. In fact, this is the photograph of me, taking my two girls out for a walk for the very first time on my own. Up until this point, Tabitha hadn't been well enough to leave the hospital, even for a short time. You can note the date. Tabitha in this picture was 3.5 months old. 3 and a half months, and she'd never been out of the hospital. I remember that for the first time since she'd been born, on this day, I finally got to be just a Mum. I got to take her out, in a buggy and walk around the area with in the fresh air on my own, without nurses and Doctors watching my every move. It was a tough time. While we were stuck in that hospital, I got to see seriously premature babies grow, develop and go home, I saw a baby come in with life threatening non-accidental injuries, and I saw newborn babies admitted going through withdrawal. The one thing I remember hurting the most about my time in this unit, was that I felt it was so unfair. My baby was born at term, I had looked after myself throughout pregnancy with not even so much as a glass of wine, and I had done nothing to hurt her, and yet I was the one whose baby wouldn't get well, and couldn't come home.

I keep this photo on my fridge to remind me of the happiness I felt on that day (which incidentally was planned in advance, nothing spontaneous in that place) when I finally got to escape for a while, finally with my girls. But it also reminds me how hard and unfair it all was, and how there were times I really didn't think she'd ever come home. So many memories. All from one photograph.