The birth of a baby is a time filled with joy and fear, and my family experienced both when my daughter had an emergency caesarean section in 2015. Shortly after giving birth, she suffered a life-threatening postpartum haemorrhage, and my grandson experienced a sudden deterioration in his respiration, requiring emergency admission to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the Countess of Chester Hospital. He was invasively ventilated and spent several days on the unit, alternating between progressing and deteriorating.