To have a sick child...

Before I became a Mother I used to cry at programmes like Animal Hospital or Vets in Practice as I imagined my poor cat Chloe in some dire emergency that required me having to choose between her life and death. Back then, as I welcomed the black ball of fur into my bed and gazed into her beautiful green eyes, listening to her calming purr, any harm to Chloe was the absolute worst thing that could ever have happened. And even when my Mother warned me that once I had children poor Chloe the cat would be relegated from my affections, I found it hard to believe.

Unfortunately for Chloe, my Mother was right. Thirteen years on and Chloe still demands attention, but with every child produced she has gone one further down the pecking order.

These days I no longer cry at Vets in Practice. Understandably, it's always the children's sob stories that make me well up. That and Extreme Makeover, Home Edition, of course. Oh yeah, and I did go through rather a lot of tissues when I took the girls to see Disney's 'UP' in 3-D, although that could have been to do with the odd focus required for the 3-D glasses and nothing to do with the perfect marriage and love the old couple had. No nothing to do with that whatsoever. *Sob sob*.

Anyway, that is not the point of this post. The point of this post relates in part to the bit where I cry at children suffering hardship.

When you become a parent the need to protect your child is overwhelming. It hits you with such a force that you'd be forgiven for thinking that you were suffering from some middle ear infection and needed to spend a few days lying flat in bed. I first felt it when Renée was a day old and the paediatrician at the hospital had come to perform a heel-prick test. Never one to hold back her emotions, even as a newborn, baby Renée sobbed and shook until my heart was literally broken into a thousand tiny pieces. Or at least that's how it felt. And while I held her writhing little body, I remember looking at her hysterical face, purple with rage and discomfort and thinking that I would do anything to take her pain away. As corny as it sounds, at that very moment, I knew I would give my life for hers.

Fortunately it was just a heel-prick test and we both recovered from the trauma.

Six months later, she returned to spend a few nights in hospital. It was nothing major, as it turned out, just a small kidney infection, but it had involved her turning blue and convulsing, me on my own, calling NHS Direct who in turn called an ambulance and the two of us taking a trip to children's A&E in complete panic.

At the time, Brighton's Children's hospital was a decrepit old buidling held together by bits of string and lots of Blu Tack. The care for the children was good, but for the parents of the children, not so good. As I was still breastfeeding at the time I needed to stay near Renée at night. Unfortunately all they could offer us was a cot for Renée and a tatty old upright chair for me. For three nights I slept next to her cot on two chairs pushed together. I probably would have opted for the floor, but it didn't look all that clean.

It was a truly horrific time. My husband was away working and I was a new Mother, all on my own. As I held Renée's limp and bruised hand and tried to stop her from pulling out the tubes up her nose and the drip in her arm, I felt overwhelmed with the responsibilty of being a parent. A parent of an ill child. Not surprisingly, I cried. I cried quite a lot as it happens.

Luckily, Renée recovered. As did Edie a couple of years later when she spent New Year's Eve in the very same hospital at just six weeks old with Bronchiolitis.

My little ones have been lucky. Unfortunately, not every child is as lucky and when I received an e-mail from Emily at Brits in Bosnia asking for bloggers to post about the single that the X-Factor finalists have produced which is raising funds for Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, I wanted to help. Unless you've spent a night in hospital with a sick child you can't imagine how truly horrendous it is. And you also can't imagine just how much care is needed to provide round-the-clock assistance for every child.

If you click on this link then you'll be able to see a story about a very, very ill child who Great Ormond Street Hospital have helped save.

And if you click on this link then you'll be able to see the video that is hoping to raise funds for the hospital.

And finally, if you click on this link then you can help donate funds by purchasing the single itself.

And now all that's left for me to do is to go and hug my children and thank every power that be that they are happy and healthy.