(Articles in newspapers can provide an impetus to write)

Sometime in March this year a woman gave birth to twins at twenty-seven weeks. The first was a girl and the second a boy.

After twenty minutes trying to make him breathe the doctors brought him to the mother with their apologies and asked his name, giving her the wrapped body to hold.

She said he is called Jamie. And they left her to grieve.

Then she unwrapped the boy and took off her gown. She held him accross her heart with his head on her left arm and began to tell him his name and his sister's name and that the whole family loved him and he had a whole life ahead of him.

When he gasped the doctors said it was merely a reflex.

So the mother kept talking and occasionally, over the next two hours, he gasped.

The she expressed some fluid and fed it to his lips with her finger. He drank it and opened his eyes and began to breathe normally, clutching his mother's finger.

The father said: my wife is a very strong woman.