From the moment I saw the blue line on the pregnancy test I was over the moon that I was pregnant.  I remember wanting to wear maternity clothes as soon as possible and wanted to share with family and friends our exciting news.

I gave birth to Dan my first born on one of the hottest days ever in April, 79 degrees warm at Queen Charlotte’s in London. I remember it so well, as the heating was still on in the hospital and all the mums were struggling with the heat and all the windows in our ward were wide open!

After a 23 hour labour, Daniel came into this world screaming loudly, a scrunched up face with jet black hair and all wrinkly.  I am not sure why we assume our babies are going to be born beautiful, and we are going to be all serene (like in the movies) but I certainly didn’t feel this way, actually I felt nervous, what did I know about babies, I was 21 years old and up until Dan was born it had just been me and my husband.  However our lives were about to change.

I think being a mum is hard and it does not matter how many books you read, my bible was Penelope Leach https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penelope_Leach and everything she stated in the book was completely different to what was happening in my life let me tell you!

Dan was such a miserable baby, he had colic all the time, he never seemed to sleep for more than two hours and I can only describe him as angry…… all day, every day.  It was so hard, I so wanted to love this little person but at times I really disliked him and I couldn’t understand why.  Its meant to be a joyous time having a baby, me I just wasn’t getting it.  I went to National Childbirth Trust Mummy meetings https://www.nct.org.uk/ god what a waste of time that was, all the mums with perfect babies and me with a screaming one, I so didn’t connect with them apart from one.  Her name was Lynn and she had two children, Ruth and Daniel so if you are out there somewhere, THANK YOU, you never judged me for not breast feeding, bloody hell I tried but Mr. angry was not having it.

When Daniel was about 5 months old I went to see my GP, desperate I suppose to have someone say I was doing an okay job being a Mummy and there was nothing physically wrong with him.  He asked me how I was feeling and I told him the truth, I didn’t like this little person that I had given birth too and was expected to love him but seemed to have no feelings for him.  My GP asked me what I would do if he hurt Dan, and I said I would physically hurt the doctor.  He then explained to me that I did indeed love Mr. Angry but that I was suffering from Post Natal Depression, fuck I cried buckets then, I couldn’t cope with my son and was mental too.

I was prescribed tablets and in just a few short weeks the cloud finally lifted and I began to enjoy my beautiful boy, he was still angry quite a lot, and 11 years later we finally knew why.

Our Dan has had to endure quite a lot during his growing up years.  At 3 years old we learnt that he was blind in the left eye, and had very little sight in his right eye, thankfully through wearing a patch for two years on his eyes not at the same time obviously (LOL) he eventually gained quite a bit of sight back into the eye although he does wear glasses that would look like bottle bottoms but for the latest technology in glass wear.

He was diagnosed with Dysphasia  swna.org.uk/Dysphasia and dyspraxia dyspraxiafoundation.org.uk/dyspraxia at 7 years old and the education authorities then decided to send Dan to a speech and language school.  He stayed at this school until he moved onto senior school and was adamant that he did not want to go into another school for children with special needs.  We then took the decision to send him back into mainstream education where he was bullied for the next few years.  At eleven years of age he along with Jared and Jack were diagnosed with Fragile X Syndrome, http://www.fragilex.org.uk/syndrome and we were the first family in the UK to have not one, but three children with this disability…… wow what a claim to fame, and a disability I have hated ever since that day as our lives were to take a different path to others.  Ironically Dan thought for many years that he only got FXS when we were diagnosed not realising that in fact he had been born with the disability.

Dan is in his 30’s now and has had many ups and downs in his life, but he finally left home in 2016 and now lives independently with support in his own one bedroom flat.  He remains Mr. Angry at times but when he smiles he lights up the world, he also has a very quirky sense of humour and can make us all laugh out loud.  He is not one to enjoy being in other peoples company but if he likes you and you accept him just as he is, his speech becomes fluent, he relaxes and then he really joins in with us, his family and friends.