While on my HCA shift  I met a mother who had given birth to twin boys at twenty-five weeks.

Due to their early delivery, they had to be taken to the Neonatal  Intensive Care Unit and separated from their parents to give the boys the best chance of survival. This left their mother constantly anxious, waiting for each opportunity to see her sons, not knowing what was going to happen to them.

She was particularly concerned about whether she could adequately provide for them, breast-feeding challenges adding fuel to the anxiety-driven fire that surrounded her stay in hospital.

This creative piece represents how her sons were both present  – yet so far, two empty cardigans showing the hole in the mother’s heart while she waited for any morsel of news the medical team had for her.

After this exhibition, these cardigans will be donated to the ward to be given to another pair of premature newborns.