A Brave Mummy's Legacy

- Bess Browning

All mums have those ‘heartbursting’ moments with their children. and with my two daughters, ava-Lily and Saffia, mine were no different. Such as when ava-Lily, now five, uttered ‘mama’ for the first time, or when she beamed for the camera on her first day at school. For Saffia, just 23 weeks old, the moments my husband Dan and I have cherished are the simple, yet momentous things – her holding my finger with her hand, her smiling for the first time.

But where they do become different is that my chance for more special moments is limited. Unlike other parents, I won’t get to see when Ava-Lily or  Saffia celebrate their 18th birthdays or bring home their first boyfriends. I won’t be able to enjoy shopping trips with them or help them pick out their wedding dresses. Because every day since 15 December 2017, just eight weeks after Saffia was born, I’ve been living with the fact that I am dying.

It’s funny how life can change so quickly, so intrinsically. One minute, my husband and I were content, with steady jobs– me a nail technician, Dan a road engineer – and wonderful children. The next, we had no future at all. Dan and I had been together since we were 14 and even from those early, fresh-faced days, we’d planned the rest of our lives. Most things fell into place – we bought a house and married in our hometown of Frome, Somerset, in 2008. But there was always something missing – we were desperate for a family.