We love our parents or our friends or others in our lives, the feeling and expression taking all manner of permutations.

When it's your own child though, this kind of love supplants all others.

IN OTHER NEWS:

What is it that makes you taken totally unaware, knocked sideways and filled with an overwhelming desire to protect this tiny person filled with the most primal of needs.

Becoming a parent - no matter if it's a first arrival or not - is a monumental journey; from learning that a baby is on the way to preparing for the birth and then the sleepless parenthood that follows.

We only want to hope for the best and usually expect that that is what will eventuate.

MORE OPINION

And so to find yourself in the almost unfathomable position where you don't get to take your baby home must be heartbreaking on an almost surreal level.

That though is what Thurgoona's Jessee Williams and Liam Butson endured.

Already blessed with a boy, Noah, the couple went from the joy of finding out their unborn second child was to be a boy to the news from the same 20-week scan that there were serious problems.

Finn's prognosis was extremely poor, as told in later tests that revealed he had a rare abnormality that meant severe intellectual and physical disabilities.

Termination was the terrible choice that had to be made, then he was delivered and Jessee made another difficult decision in going to see him in his cot.

As she says, the overwhelming sadness was made even more difficult to bear by the simple fact that little Finn was so "beautiful".

In the time since the couple have welcomed their daughter, Maia. Life has gone on, but Finn has not been forgotten.

He has though has come to represent something even greater.

In honour of Finn, they have in just two weeks raised $7000 towards a Bears of Hope Cuddle Cot, which has its own cooling system to so families can get to spend time with their own baby "born sleeping".

Out of a terrible loss the family has created something truly uplifting.