When Ivy and Noah were born, I was really mixed up.

It had been eighteen months since my newborn son had died and their pregnancy had been fraught with pain and fear. Grief had been put on the back burner so I could concentrate on the little people growing inside me.

William had spent all of his days attached to tubes and wires inside the NICU and Ivy and Noah (who were born at 30 weeks) were now in the very same place.

I’d held it together for so long, for my other children, to keep Ivy and Noah safe, so I guess it was understandable that after they were born, I lost the plot a bit.

I just couldn’t function properly and I kind of went into some weird denial that I had live babies.

It lasted about  a year and a half.

Don’t get me wrong. I looked after them, fed them, mothered them, nurtured them. I cared about them but (deep breath) I didn’t love them.

I couldn’t let myself.

They might die, after all and I couldn’t invest in them all that I had in William. I couldn’t risk it. I had to protect myself because if I loved them, if I let them into my heart and something happened, I wouldn’t be able to survive.

I knew it

and I had other children who I needed to be there for.

Their course had not been easy, they were both sickly, premmie babies, especially Ivy, so the fear that they were not going to make it was real, for me, at least.

I remember the first time that I felt a twinge.

Of love, that is.

It was William’s third angel day and my Mum had brought around some helium balloons to release.

Ivy and Noah were starting to get into that toddler stage and went crazy when they saw the balloons. Batting them and giggling like insane people.

It was a beautiful, innocent joyful moment

and I will never forget it.

I look back on that moment and I know that it was a turning point.

It was the first time I enjoyed them, the first time I saw them, really saw them for who they were and what they meant to me.

The first time I  let myself  love them.

Ivy and Noah have helped me to heal. They have taught me to love again and to trust.

Trust life,

trust myself.

At a time I thought I would never find my way again, they showed me.