A couple of weeks ago we were both lucky and unlucky to welcome our little baby boy into the world. Lucky because he's ours and we couldn't wait to meet him. Unlucky because he was eight weeks early. He was a good weight for which we are thankful and needed very little intervention compared to other babies of his age but even so I don't think either of us were prepared for the journey we now find ahead of us.

At this age babies are classed as "very premature" which means they often require help breathing and their other organs aren't mature enough to cope with the outside world properly. Over the past few weeks we've battled with recession (his lungs aren't big or open enough to cope with normal air), jaundice (his liver can't get rid of the dead bloodcells his body produces), weight loss (normal for all babies after birth but not great for prem babies who don't weigh much to begin with) and an inability to maintain his temperature.

We're turning a corner now and he is doing well, his lungs are now able to cope without assistance, he's keeping his heart rate up and his jaundice is low enough that he doesn't require intervention for the time being. He's also started to regain weight although not quite enough to equal his birthweight just yet.

The whole experience though has taught me that you really can't tell what is going on in someone's life just by looking at them. When you're pregnant you have a bump to give the rest of the world a clue. I no longer have that but there's still tonnes going on!

Even people that know what's going don't realise the implications of having a baby in the Special Care Unit and I'm not sure I did before all of this either. Over the past few weeks we've had a lot of comments that really do highlight how little people understand of what it means to have a prem baby in hospital...

"oh that's good, you'll be able to bank up your sleep"

To begin with I still have to produce milk for him even though he's not with me. This is harder because my body didn't have time to build up the fat that would have gone into early milk production. It is also much more likely that my body will stop producing milk so I have to make sure I keep up a regular routine to try and prevent this (mother's milk is particularly important to prem babies as they've missed out on time to build up their immune system). This means that not only do I have to express every 2-3 hours during the day but I also have to during the night. And I have to do this without his company!

"it must be great to have someone else look after him"

Yes there are nurses around him 24/7 but a large part of his care is done by us as we need to build up our bond and it settles him more. Premature babies can't cope with much stimulation, it wears them out and causes them to loose weight etc. In the first couple of days he was with us we weren't allowed to touch him at all. Now we are allowed to touch him every six hours to do his "cares" - wipe his eyes and change his nappy. I am allowed to hold him after his cares if he's awake to let him try to feed from me. If he's not awake we can't touch him. If he screams between cares we are only allowed to place a hand on him, stroking would be too much for him to process. This is hard.

"it's going to be so much harder when you get him home"

I've done the newborn bit before and it was no where near as hard as this! I currently leave for the hospital at 7 in the morning, I get home at 10 at night. If I'm lucky I get to come home for a couple of hours in the afternoon and we've had a major break this weekend and have only been going in for his 8,2 and 8 o'clock cares. Once at the hospital we spend a lot of our time waiting which is surprisingly tiring! He has a tube feed every 3 hours which we can now do ourselves. A tube feed involves asperating him - drawing fluid out of his stomach via his tube and placing it on ph paper to check that the tube is still in place; measuring out an exact amount of milk and then pushing it through his tube with a syringe. If he feeds from me we asperate, put him to me, wait for him to finish and then give him a smaller amount of milk through his tube (he throws up if he has a full amount). I can't wait for the day when I can just feed him without all the faff! Being in the hospital is also far more isolating than having a newborn at home. When we're in the special care unit we can't have our phones on so are completely cut off from the rest of the world. Unlike at home where I could potter about the house, keep in touch with friends, get a bit of rest, eat some food... None of this is possible whilst he's in the SCBU.

On the plus side we are getting the very best of care and have the opportunity to learn lots of techniques for looking after a new baby. Before we get to bring him home we have to have an intensive lesson on how to care for him part of which includes staying in one of the specially built "flats" for at least 24 hours so we can learn to cope whilst still having help very close by, there's not many new mums and dads that get that chance!

So now it's just a waiting game for him to mature until he's able to cope with the big bad world, only six weeks to go...