Christine's Christmas miracle

Poppy was dressed in a long white gown trimmed with tinsel, and wore a halo of tinsel on her head. Unfortunately her halo had a habit of slipping slowly over her eyes so she kept having to push it up again!

She said her line beautifully, loud and clear, just as her mum had taught her, and she joined in with the songs and actions, although wriggling from time to time as she finds it hard to sit still!

I know you are all reading this thinking: "Well, we went to the nativity and saw our little one, and they were wonderful," and I have no doubt that they were. This proud grandma couldn't help but think of the start in life our beautiful granddaughter had, she is you see, our miracle.

She was born 10 weeks early, an identical twin, but sadly Emily, her twin, did not survive.

Poppy weighed three pounds four ounces, and after the briefest glance at her by her worried parents, she was whisked away to neonatal to be cared for by the wonderful nurses and doctors there.

As grandparents our first glimpse of her was in an incubator, attached to lots of tubes and wires, a monitor beeping beside her glass cot, the alarm sounding at regular intervals to say her breathing was not right, or she stopped breathing for a second or two. The feeling of worry was overwhelming, the shock, the feeling of helplessness. I looked at our wonderful daughter sat in a wheelchair following her caesarean, and felt like crying for all she was going through, but I couldn't, I had to be strong, supportive, and positive.

We all grieved silently for Emily, unable to express the grief as we had to get Poppy through her ordeal.

We had to believe the baby would pull through, there was really no other way to get through that time.

Poppy left hospital six weeks later, four weeks before she was even due to be born, still weighing just under 5 pounds. She was so tiny, fragile, and delicate, her dad could pick her up in one hand she was so small.

Tiny baby clothes swamped her and we had to send for clothes from a website specialising in premature baby wear, she was lost in her car seat, and the smallest nappies were huge on her tiny frame. This was at six weeks old, weighing just under five pounds, so you may imagine how tiny she was when she was born.

A couple of days after her birth she went down to 2 and a half pounds as babies tend lose a bit of weight after birth, though they certainly could do without doing so.

So you can understand why our granddaughter's first school nativity was so special to us all.

The story of the birth of the baby Jesus was a miracle, our granddaughter is our miracle, even if she does wriggle around all the time!

She's our beautiful wriggling angel.