First-time mums would have wanted nothing more than to cuddle their newborns on Mother's Day yesterday.
But the parents of premature babies had to view their precious darlings through an incubator and, at most, hold their child's tiny hand between their fingers.
In an effort to lift the spirits of these longing parents, the Tiny Infants Parents Support, or Tips, yesterday delivered flowers to mothers at the Neonatal Paediatric Intensive Care Unit in Mater Dei Hospital.
The unit hosts those vulnerable babies who popped into the world before expected and need the support of an incubator to continue developing outside the womb.
The babies have to stay in hospital until they are strong enough to go home.
This can be emotionally draining to the parents who always imagined childbirth to culminate in that moment when their baby is handed over to them to hold, explained Didi Busietta from the Tips support group.
Apart from not being able to embrace their child, the parents have to head home empty-handed and are haunted by thoughts of what may go wrong as they think of their tiny baby attached to tubes in hospital, she said.
Tips is made up of women who have experienced this trauma and are now offering their experience to help other parents through it. Further information about Tips can be obtained from the Cana Movement on 2123 8068.
Young, expectant mothers, those who have just given birth, are about to undergo some sort of surgery, and even grandmothers were also yesterday recognised for their important role by the Parliamentary Secretary in the Social Policy Ministry, Joe Cassar, at Mater Dei Hospital.
He paid a visit to a mix of mothers from various wards and facing different medical conditions, putting a smile on their faces and giving them each a plant on the occasion of Mother's Day.
While cracking jokes, Dr Cassar expressed his solidarity with those mothers who would rather have been at home yesterday, instead of at hospital.
Some were patients and others were mothers of child patients, so they would not have been in the same frame of mind as those who had just had a baby and were experiencing a joyful moment.
He also thanked the nurses and staff, who were working on Mother's Day, hoping that their husbands would be doing the cooking. But many replied that they had, nonetheless, prepared their food before coming to work and it only needed heating up, proving Dr Cassar's point that they were indispensable.