"One thing that has helped me enormously is writing poetry." - Lucy's story #WorldMentalHealthDay

My son was born at 31 weeks. I knew he would be coming early; we had spent months being monitored several times a week while the fetal medicine team tried to keep him safely inside for as long as possible. The waiting was torturous. My hospital bag was always packed. I desperately didn’t want him to come yet, but I was also terrified that each appointment would bring another piece of bad news.

Eventually, he came, and we spent five weeks in neonatal care. Even though I’d had weeks to “prepare” and had even used the Bliss website to see what a NICU looked like, it still felt like whiplash. Nothing could really prepare me for being a mother in that environment.

It has now been over a year since he came home, but there are still things that can take me straight back: seeing heavily pregnant women, watching someone breastfeed, new born clothes in a shop. And our journey hasn’t become simple since discharge. My son is medically complex and is tube-fed, so hospital appointments, equipment and medical decisions have remained part of our everyday life.

One thing that has helped me enormously is writing poetry about it. It might sound a little silly, but once I started, I couldn’t stop.

I realised that, for me, grief was held in objects. So I started there: the bonding square we were given, an unused bottle warmer, the new highchair that speech and language therapy advised us to buy. Ordinary things that had somehow become loaded with everything I had expected motherhood to be.

I’ve now written more than 50 poems about our experience. Some are funny; some I find difficult to read again. But there is something comforting about seeing my actual life spread across pages. Some days I read them almost as an act of remembrance. Other days I’m frightened to look at them, and they stay in a drawer.

Bliss was such a support during those terrifying months. They didn’t mind my lonely 2am emails, and I remember how grounding it was to read and reread the responses from volunteers - a tiny glimpse of another human being during such a dark time.

If you are in the middle of it right now, just keep putting one foot in front of the other. This is a club none of us wanted to join. But one day you may meet another NICU parent, and in the silence between you there can be an understanding that doesn’t need explaining. It might not feel like healing yet. But you will be seen, and you will be held.