Well, this time last year we were in the middle of a storm from which there seemed to be no escape. Ben had been taken ill with a respiratory condition which was threatening his young life and he needed to be air-lifted out of the Province and flown to Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool where there was an intensive care cot available for him.

The nightmare continued for two and a half weeks without any sign of improvement and for all of us it was the most draining time of our lives. We had suffered the death of our first son almost exactly a year before, but that was a sudden thing. For much of the time Bailey was in hospital, the signs were hopeful and very positive. With Ben it was very different. He was admitted to hospital in a very dangerously ill state. He stayed there for 18 days and just as his condition hit it's lowest point and the doctors were about the start preparing us for the worst, Ben pulled himself out of the dive and made a very sudden and startling recovery. Since then he has not looked back.

Now a year later it is sometimes difficult to associate that critically ill little boy with the ball of energy we have now. We were told when Ben left Liverpool that his lungs had been very badly damaged both by the virus he caught, and the ventilators used to keep him breathing when his body had all but given up. If his lungs are damaged, we see no sign of it because he so full of life and can keep up with the best of us. The hole in his heart that was caused by the pressure it was under during his illness seems to have closed again, certainly we see no ill effects in Ben.

All in all, the last year with Ben has been mostly full of joy with a few minor scares when his apnoea monitor went off. Once or twice this was a genuine alarm but most of the time it was a false one because the sensor pads had come unstuck from him. He has been regularly seen by his doctor and health visitor and everyone is very pleased with how he is doing.

Ben is a very happy baby who rarely cries. He wakes up with a big smile on his face and you can tell how much he looks forward to the coming day by the way he bounces about in his cot. He is already a creature of habit. He likes to bounce and roll about on our bed for a while and then he likes to settle down to watch Jeremy Kyle and a bit of This Morning with Phil and Fern before getting washed and dressed and then coming down for breakfast. Once that is done he likes to have a look in the dishwasher to see if there is anything he can do to arrange things better. Ben is a very domesticated little boy, but the trouble is that he likes to do his washing one sock at a time. He has studied us as we use the washing machine and he now knows which buttons to press and which dials to turn. He doesn't bother with detergent, he just bangs away at the buttons and waits for the show behind the glass to start!

Ben must know he is a bit famous because he has developed a Hollywood style smile which is beamed at everyone he meets. Absolutely everyone he comes across is grinned at, but unlike Hollywood, Ben's smile is 100% genuine.

He is not yet talking properly, but he is very vocal and can make his point more than adequately. As for walking he can do it in fine style when he's holding on to the furniture, but he just lacks that last little bit of confidence to fly solo for the moment. when he does start walking, nothing in the house will be safe!

We simply could not guess this time last year that Ben would be in the great position he is in now. We dare not even hope this time last year, but thanks to doctors like Clint Thorburn, Paul Sarginson, Fred Baines et al, and nurses such as Tim, Dawn, Paula, another Tim, Matt, Juby, Nicola, and others we have our son and he is in fine fettle. Without those people we would be in a completely different, much darker world.