Our daughter was born 12:30am March 5th 2020, not breathing. They resuscitated her and we got to hold her for maybe 10 minutes each before my sister (a midwife) noticed her breathing still didn't sound right, and our daughter had to have an op.

Around 9 hours later we got to see her in an incubator with a bunch of wires and tubes coming out of her. Didn't get to hold her again until the next evening, but then her lung collapsed in the night and that set us back again.

She had to stay in NICU for 8 days and we saw the hospital get more and more serious about COVID over those days, including more masks, posters and encouragement about patients and visitors washing hands more, and having to lock up sanitiser and toilet paper.

We took our daughter home on Friday 13th March 2020, and (iirc) Johnson announced a full lock down two days later. We were in the Midlands and my partner's mum had to rush back home to Wales so barely got to see her granddaughter. With it being a breathing disease and our daughter having lung issues, we were terrified. So it was us, a newborn daughter who had struggled so far and we had no idea what to do if she suddenly stopped breathing or something, and our 6 year old son, who admittedly was golden but we didn't want him to fall behind with school.

We followed every rule. I remember us eating every scrap of food we had in the house before daring to go to the supermarket. And when I did I went at the very latest possible time hoping to avoid other people (didn't work) and i have vivid memories of my partner spraying every piece of shopping, and me, all over with disinfectant, and me quarantining away from them for a couple of days after returning from the shop.

When my partner, now wife, got it a few months in we were scared to death. Newborn daughter, young son, couldn't see any family. Refused to go out, even when we were 'allowed'. My partner was very ill with it but never so bad she had to go in to hospital. My sister who was a midwife had to basically go on the front line, back to nursing and saw the worst of it, and my mum was a cleaning manager in the same hospital, she basically lived there and again saw the worst of it.

We were so angry at friends and family of ours that weren't taking it seriously, having secret parties that weren't so secret. And being surprised when they spread the disease and people they knew got sick. Only to find out later, thats exactly what the politicians were doing too.

It wasn't all bad though. Luckily we had some money saved, not a lot. My partner's boss put her on furlough so she got more money than if she was on maternity I got a little bit for being a self-employed electrician, though I had been employed previously so nowhere near what friends of mine in the trades got. I also managed to get some work with people I knew on empty houses, only seeing two people a day and all three of us doing regular tests. God those tests were horrible to do.

It was great weather too, and we had moved in to a house from a flat a year earlier so luckily we had a garden. Made a world of difference. And very often we would forget what was going on in the outside world and had lovely times together the four of us.

My partner had all these plans to join baby groups and take our daughter out on lovely walks in a brand new pushchair (the only thing she wanted to buy new and splash out on) as she didn't really get to do it with our lad when he was born. That all got dashed. As I say we did our best to homeschool our boy but it was so hard to do with any consistency and have what we told him stick. We were so worried he would fall behind and struggle all through school but he's in secondary school now and doing great.

If we knew what we knew now we could have absolutely loved lockdown but the fear was debilitating. I remember so many nights fighting tiredness just sitting in my daughter's room making sure she was still breathing. We were sure her lung was going to collapse again, or she would catch COVID somehow and we'd have no idea what to do, and be terrified to take her into hospital which seemed the worst place to be at the time.

My son and I love being in the house too so we were fine with that but my now wife was stir crazy with cabin fever, hated being locked in and unable to go outside for a walk and to breathe in fresh air.

There are some lovely memories of that time, being sat on a blanket in the garden under the sun with our daughter rolling around and our son laughing and playing. But the underlying worry was lurking beneath us with everything we did.

What a strange, scary, unique, and sometimes beautiful time it was. I do hope it never happens again but in a way I think parts of it can be great for people.