When her baby was born at 30 weeks, Tamlyn Archer caught only a ''split second'' glimpse of her son before he was rushed into neonatal intensive care at the Canberra Hospital.
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It was the next day before she could see her son, Hayes, hooked up to an apparatus that helped his tiny lungs to breathe.
After an abruption at 27 weeks, Ms Archer and her husband Shane knew Hayes would be born early.
While other new parents had long taken their babies home, the couple were still visiting Hayes in hospital for more than a month after he was born.
''I think the hardest time for me was when I was discharged and I had to leave and we had to leave him there,'' Ms Archer said. ''No one talks about their experience of having a premature child.
''You feel isolated because most of your family doesn't know what you're going through.''
The Archers joined other Canberra families on a charity walk on Sunday for Life's Little Treasures, an organisation that assists families and raises awareness of the support needs of parents of premature babies.
Hayes is now a healthy 11-month-old and Ms Archer said they had been ''lucky'' in that their son had few ongoing medical concerns.
But she said there had been little information to prepare her for the experience of having a premature baby and there had been gaps in the support available to her and Shane after Hayes' birth.
''We don't have a great deal of support services [in Canberra],'' Ms Archer said. ''Especially for dads … They need all the help mothers need as well.''
Renae Meiksa, the co-ordinator of Sunday's event, said parents of premature babies faced ongoing medical challenges and uncertainty about what was going to happen.
She said support groups and play groups with families encountering similar struggles could help, but in Canberra there was no such service available to parents on the southern side of the city. She and her partner David Blacker had premature twin boys five years ago.
They lost one at three months, while Coby, now 5½, was in hospital for eight months. ''There can be delays, challenges, medical appointments,'' Ms Meiksa said.
''There's always something.''
Ms Meiksa said she had organised the Canberra event to help families ''to meet up and realise they're not alone''.
