It lays there in perfect peace and unperturbed harmony. The embodiment of innocence and purity. The fruit of love.

Two people get together for moments of intimacy and passion. Mindless pleasure or purposeful procreation. Physical enjoyment inflamed by lust and sometimes heightened by distant hopes of propagation.

Waves of thoughts and sensations, rushing through loins and minds. Stark images of the erotic, flashes from the past. And then with a sudden tightening, constricting of muscles and veins, furtive and fleeting instants of intense pleasure, until reality slowly creeps back in.

And the miracle has happened. A new life is created. From nothing comes everything. From the improbable and the seemingly absurd comes all.

For nine months the mother’s breath gently oxygenates it, her food sustains it, her love and thoughts nurture it. It grows and it waits. It moves and it kicks, until it is time.

Tiny, weak, miniature, dependant and fragile. So fragile that its beauty is amplified and encapsulated in its absolute vulnerability, leading to the defence and fierce safeguarding by all.

It sleeps, oblivious of its surroundings, dreaming of things to come, uncaring and unawaiting, safely far from any reality, unattached and unthoughtful of any preoccupation.

It twists and it turns without purpose. Its little arms punch away aimlessly in the air and its tiny fingered hands grasp at imaginary mummies and daddies, while it instinctively mimics sucking motions and noises in its sleep.

A perfectly formed individual, with fine wisps of hair, a little pot belly, chubby knees and elbows and a cute button-shaped nose. The tiniest toes and fingers with barely visible but fast growing nails. A nicely rounded bottom and perfectly shaped genitals firmly placing it as little boy or little girl.

It depends entirely on its parents for its survival. Yet it survives. It even thrives.

Until slowly, after years of constant unabating care and attention, with not one small instant of unsupervised heed, it very slowly acquires recognition of its surroundings. The dawn, the awakening, the realisation of self.

We look down at our sleeping babies and cannot help think that they are us and we are them, forever one, forever together, but forever separated by time.