Yummy Mummy is a fundraising campaign run by CLIC Sargent, the children’s cancer charity. For the last six years mums all across the UK have been raising money by taking part in Yummy Mummy Week. This year Nickie at I Am Typecast is raising awareness of this campaign asking mummies to do something yummy to help raise money for children with cancer and their families.

Each week in February Nickie is providing writing prompts for Mummies to use as their way of helping to raise the profile of this worthy campaign.

Each week there will be three prompts to choose from; a personal post, a creative post or a Yummy post telling how and why this campaign means something for you.

Week One’s prompts are all about what your children mean to you.

I have chosen the creative prompt but I am writing it from a personal point of view as I have experience of coming home alone, without my children.

It would be great if you wanted to join in with the Yummy Mummy Writing Prompts along with Nickie and the other mummies. There will be a linky every Thursday so please link up and share some very special comment love for this very very special Yummy Mummy cause.

Week One: Creative: Imagine your child can’t be home with you.You miss them terribly – what do you do? How do you feel?

It is the strangest feeling in the world being a first time Mummy, to two babies, who cannot come home.

You leave the hospital with empty arms, teary eyes and the heaviest heart not quite knowing how you or if they will make it through the night.

You go into the house and it is cold even though it is mid July.

It is empty and you know that you are alone.

No worrying where to put the babies, how to keep them warm.

No getting used to new bodies and new routines.

No cuddles or kisses or lingering long looks at button noses and fine frail fingers.

You set up the machine that is your substitute baby. That you will wake for every three hours night and day.

There is no motivation to wake without hearing a cry.

No baby to soothe or to settle.

A whirring machine sucking the life that should be given direct to the babies you love.

A restless, sleepless, loveless night.

A morning filled with trepidation.

A drive to the hospital not knowing what you will see when you get there.

Dead? Alive? Well? Unwell? Stong? Weak? Natural? Blue?

The corridors are neverending.

The uncertainty everlasting.

The heart almost breaking.

The relief finally overflowing.

One night done, 58 to go! (though of course we did not know this at the time)

As the days draw on it becomes more normal but never easy.

How is it possible to miss two tiny people so much?

Two tiny people you barely know but need you more than anything else in all the world.

More than the machines, the medicines, the nurses.

They need their Mummy for nourishment and love.

How is it possible to love two tiny people so much?

Two tiny people you have barely held and seen mostly through the screen of a plastic box?

How is it okay for them to be there and us to be here?

How is it okay to eat and sleep and carry on like before?

Because you do, you have to, to make it through.

To stay strong.

They need you to be strong.

Those teeny tiny people.

You are their strength.

They miss you in the night.

The nurses tell you so.

This makes it harder.

Harder to leave at the end of the day.

Without your babies in your arms.

Harder to bare the pain of leaving them behind.

Harder to wait until that magical day that finally will see them home.

You feel empty inside.

Determined.

Depressed.

Focused.

Lost.

Exhausted.

Wired.

Helpless.

Needy.

Confused.

Misunderstood.

Alone.

Until they are home.

Until your precious babies come home.