I love the light bulb moments, the time to reflect and ask questions, the time to focus. I love how we’re doing life at the moment. There is nothing all that contrived, nothing dull. Every day brings a new revelation. I love it that Master Nine and I have had long discussions about Chaos Theory and the butterfly effect as well as tackled big questions such as “does God exist ?” I love it that he counts backwards from 0 (-1, -2, -3, -4…) and works out algebraic formulas without even thinking about it (for instance: Mum what’s 365 + ? = 400 when trying to work out exactly how many days he had to go till an event). I love it that in the past four months, he’s worked out how to put together a blog with banners, links, and organised, interesting content, has read a book about website marketing (not that he’d know it in those terms) and implemented the advice to increase traffic to his website,  has learned teamwork and delegation skills by sharing his blogging responsibilities with others, has figured out how to use a variety of widgets, and writes constantly (He loves capital letters, probably because he’s so excited about his blog posts), has learned to use Photoshop including skills in cropping, reorientating photos and images (geometry…not that we call it that), using layers, animated banner ads and resizing images (percentages, understanding of pixel count). I love it that a discussion about jumping off a bridge into a boat led to the discovery that everything falls at the same rate regardless of mass so long as the air resistance is the same and I love it that he tried to test it out by dropping a bottle to the ground at the same time as himself (ouch!). I love it that we were on the bridge at the time.

I love it that he has gained more independence in getting his own food and clothes but that he still wants me to do it for him, because it fills his love tank… I love it that we have talked about that, while snuggling under my bed covers during a thunder storm with his two younger brothers. I admire his ability to make friends online and his wisdom at making sure the nine year old in Canada, really was a nine year old. I love it that he didn’t hesitate to call his new friend and then downloaded Skype to make sure he could call for free. I love it that he tweets and that he sticks to a set of rules in terms of who’s allowed to follow him to safeguard himself! I love it that he learned how to fish and didn’t get discouraged when he didn’t catch anything, I love it that he’s keen to give it another go.

I love it that he’s worked out what he needs to do to get a job at a certain place by a certain time and that he’s willing to do the work to get there. He’ll probably change his mind, but then again, he might not. I love it that no one’s told him he can’t do that or that he’ll have to wait until he’s a grown up to try. I love it that his eyes sparkle when he sees a well designed object and wants to replicate it, and thinks he can! (ie. a walled pond with a water fountain). I love that one day he figured out that everything was made from the same stuff and I love that he takes a keen interest in current affairs shows on TV. I love that after watching a documentary on lightening and storms we had a whopper of a lightning storm that knocked the power out! It was good timing! When Master Nine was in school I never new what he was learning or if, indeed he was retaining anything.  We missed so much! Now I notice every little thing, every little “ah ha!” I love the excitement, the thrill that comes with an accomplishment or a discovery and I love being there to help solve problems when they arise. Children learn. We can choose to make it difficult by sending them on a twisted, rocky path or we can choose to clear that path for them to decide their own way. I choose the latter.

That the majority of people are too busy to understand the complexities and evidence behind the choice to birth a baby at home doesn’t surprise me. But it never ceases to astound me how quick people are to judge women who make this choice or who, indeed, feel they have no choice. Why do people believe what some pubescent journalist fresh out of uni says when nine times out of ten the information is at best superficial, at worst down right lies? And they certainly don’t improve their reporting accuracy as they get older…

Take the case of an opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph today http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,25298631-5001030,00.html.

The journalist, Fiona Connolly, claims “Home births are selfish, irresponsible, anti-reason and anti-progress.” She also has the audacity to compare birth in a poverty-stricken, war-torn Somali village with homebirth in the safe, leafy suburbs of Australia. Connolly fails to consider that women who homebirth in Australia DO have access to all the modern technology and a trained professional to assist them. Somali women in remote villages do not. I’m not really sure where the reason comes in to this argument.

What strikes me about this ill-informed piece was what was missing. What about the perinatal mortality rates of New Zealand and the UK and the Netherlands, all of which have state-sanctioned homebirth programs? Their perinatal mortality rates are not only comparable to or better than Australia’s but their intervention rates are better. Perinatal mortality rates in Australia are 10.1 per 10,000 live births. It is the same in New Zealand (despite their vastly smaller population which tends to skew statistics to look worse than they actually are). The UK’s perinatal mortality rate is 8 per 10,000 live births and the Netherlands 9 per 10,000 live births.

To support her point that all homebirthers care about are candles and home cooked meals, Connolly quotes various celebrities who have gushed over their homebirth experiences. But by pulling these quotes from the Homebirth Australia website she failed to do her homework and find out that Elle Macpherson birthed with the assistance of a private obstetrician in a birth centre. And where was the flippant quote from the great Australian thinker and journalist George Negus who’s wife Kristy was also a homebirther? Is Connolly seriously calling educated and philanthropic people like George and Kristy “selfish, irresponsible anti-reason and anti-progress?”

Another interesting nugget in Connolly’s rant is that she mistakenly believes that narcotics somehow make birth safer and that women who homebirth don’t have access to antibiotics, oxygen and oxytocic drugs. This is far from the truth. Most homebirthers are well aware of the need to obtain an oxygen tank, and oxytocic drugs from the local pharmacy prior to birth and organise this with their local GP (because midwives are prevented from prescribing these in Australia despite it being within their scope of practice). That said, most women who birth at home choose to avoid drugs and unnecessary antibiotics, not just because they want a beautiful birth experience but because they are informed and educated about the harm these can do to their babies. The fact is, we aren’t in a war torn country with no access to medical care when it is needed. Women who genuinely need antibiotics are referred by their midwife to a GP or to the hospital for treatment. But let’s not let the facts get in the way of a good homebirther-bashing.

That women have lost babies in childbirth is sad and tragic but we are not in a position to judge whether or not being at a hospital would have made any difference in any of these cases. We are also not in a position to judge whether being at home might have saved the woman who died from an amniotic fluid embolism or who’s baby’s throat was accidentally cut during surgical delivery. On mercifully rare occasions terrible things happen in childbirth in whatever environment a woman births in—be it home or hospital–but telling every woman that she should have no choice but to birth her baby in a hospital is not only irresponsible it is misogynistic and misguided.

Australia: Law et al, 2008 (AIHW)

New Zealand: NZHIS, 2006

UK: CEMACH, 2008 & NHS Information Centre 2008

Netherlands: Statline, 2008 (Statistical Yearbook 2004)

NB: It is important to note that different countries record perinatal statistics differently. The WHO standard is to report deaths from 22 weeks gestation. Most countries, however, seem to record rates from either 24 or 28 weeks. In order to present a more consistent picture, the 24 weeks has been used where possible.

Preface: Yesterday my son D was sent home from school because the learning support teachers said they couldn’t manage his behaviour. He was shafted from one person to the next and finally they sat him in the office until I was able to collect him. So today, D and L didn’t go to school (L said he had a headache). This is what we did instead…

This morning D and A got out the mat with the car track, and raced their cars around it to see who was the fastest, pretending they were race car drivers. Then A decided to do some colouring-in while L played “Line Writer” on the computer and D practiced on the Mario Kart Wii game. Then we found a cool science experiment on the internet looking at what happens to an ice cube when you drop it into a jar of cooking oil. In the instructions it said to float the ice cube on the oil but our ice cube didn’t float…. It just sank to the bottom. We watched as the ice melted and released little bubbles of oxygen into the air. The ice cube looked silvery, kinda like mercury. Eventually all the water settled at the bottom. From this we figured out that water has a higher density than oil and that oxygen likes to find a way out, even if trapped.

Then we went to the school for a visit with the special education teacher to discuss D’s “behavioural problems” and the fact that they were having trouble getting D to do anything for them. As we were discussing this, D and A were playing beautifully in the corner with a dolls house and their cars and then they were playing make-believe with the plastic dinosaurs. L was lying on the couch reading his Andy Griffiths and Paul Jennings “Just Annoying” book. After we finished, I asked D to pick up the toys and put them back in the box so we could go to the shops. He did so with little prompting.

At the shops, the boys got a little over-excited and over stimulated, so I focused their attention on finding items on my grocery list. It became a game. It fizzled a bit when they didn’t know what the words were so next time I’ll make sure I have pictures. While at the grocery store L figured out that 1kg of icing sugar was cheaper than buying two packs of 500g by three cents.

When we got home a storm rolled over and the boys went downstairs and placed Lego pieces in the new drainage pipe Wayne had placed in the ground and waited at the other end for the Lego to spew out of the drain pipe. They experimented with putting the Lego in at different points to see if it got stuck. Then L and A played “Trampoline Poison Ball” which involved jumping around and over a variety of objects on the trampoline. Then L decided to write up a set of instructions for each variation of the game “Poison Ball” he came up with, while D stayed downstairs to play and draw pictures in the mud. When I went downstairs there was mud splattered everywhere!

Today we covered science, ecology, engineering, drama, social science, maths, art, physical education, writing, and reading. Of course, while doing all these things, they didn’t learn a thing, did they?

A few months ago, I lost something precious, something I had worked 10 months to find and within eight weeks of gaining, it was gone. I didn’t really feel it at first. I was too numb from the entire experience. I was too raw to feel anything and submersed myself in work so as to avoid thinking about it at all. But recently, Angel has come back to haunt me in the exuberant faces and big rounded bellies of other women who are now five months pregnant with other, very precious somethings.

What has also brought this home is the fact that some people have been rather out of the loop. I had an email the other day from a colleague who asked when my baby was due and then at Christmas eve service last night at church, a kindly acquaintance I hadn’t seen for a while asked me the same thing. Put aside the fact that I don’t look five months pregnant (or maybe I do… maybe I’ve eaten way too much fudge this Christmas season), I was kinda dumbstruck and then felt rather mortified for this poor woman who asked an honest question. Her discomfort was obvious and mine too. I just willed the conversation to be over so that I could crawl into a hole somewhere far away. This Christmas, I was supposed to be sitting around on my lard-arse contentedly rubbing my swollen belly, making my mother shift uncomfortably at the dinner table over conversations about homebirth and birthing pools. Instead I just miss my Angel. I miss him/her desparately and wish he/she was here.

I am also reminded that for the better part of the last six years I have spent most of my time pleasing others, doing things to make me feel like I was somehow not such a selfish person. But the truth is, I am selfish and I’m sick of pretending to be otherwise. Recently, I wrote out a mission statement for my life. I really struggled with this because, to be honest, I don’t really know what I want or maybe I’m afraid that what I want isn’t really the right thing to want. I don’t know. All I do know for sure is that I have this vision in my head of spending long days with my children, enjoying their learning, their company and their fun. I have a vision of justice, of doing something bigger than myself, something that leaves a legacy. I also have a vision of truth…. it keeps pulling me back to the nagging thought that I should be doing something other than what I am currently doing.

I am conscious that I have set myself up to be pulled in a million different directions by others. I made a decision earlier in the year to stop putting emotional energy into the personal choices and conflicts of others outside my own family. This choice has confused some but I have to stick to it. My family’s survival, my survival depends on it. I need a full tank to be strong enough to deal with the ebb and flow of my family.

So what do I really want? For those I love to know the hope and love of God and the gift He has given us, a family that knows they are loved no matter what, to be able to make beautiful music and to see my children thrive. Everything else is somehow not so precious to me.

I don’t know if we will try to have a another baby again or not. I’m still raw and hurting from the experience of losing that something precious. But I do know that I will make some different choices in 2009. Some of these choices leave others scratching their heads but they are my choices to make. Somewhere along the line, we all have to decide to stop living life for the will and purpose of others and instead, live a life of purpose that is true to ourselves and honest about what motivates us to do what we do. It is easy to act out of brokenness, from hearts destroyed and confidence lost… it is hard to face the truth that this is what we do and step beyond.

My son L has been saving up for a Lego Agent set. It was about $135 retail when he first decided he wanted it and he madly set about thinking up jobs he could do for us to earn a few extra bucks. Over the past two months, L has put every cent aside for his Lego Agent set and has dedicatedly set about putting mulch around trees, watering the new garden, weeding, washing the cars, cleaning the insides of the cars, helping his brothers with tasks, helping move rocks to a retaining wall etc to earn a few dollars here and few dollars there.

One day he put fliers in all the neighbours letterboxes advertising a “dog walking service”. He didn’t get any bites (pardon the pun) but mostly because our neighbours were worried about the size of L as opposed to the size of their dogs. One day a couple of Pomeranian dogs wandered into our yard and L looked after them with gusto. When the owners came to claim their dogs, they gave him $15 which wss quickly added to his stash.

He had saved over $100 and so, the other day, Wayne went out and bought him the set and we hid it away in our cupboard. Wayne asked him today, to bring out the money he had earned and count it for us. So out came the box and every cent was counted, but there was $17 missing. The $17, it turned out, had mysteriously made its way into A’s piggy bank. A was adamant that he had found it under the bed. L was angry and upset that his precious money had been taken from his room but we calmed him down and explained that A simply didn’t understand the value of money (we were secretly glad that L did now).

Then Wayne brought out the lego set. L’s eyes went wide. We told him that he had done such a fantastic job of saving that we had decided to get it for him and pay for the rest (about $15 difference in the end). He sat there and tears welled up in his eyes as he looked over the huge, shiny, box. He was so overwhelmed with joy and disbelief, he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t believe it. He finally had his lego set after saving all this time. He couldn’t believe that we had already bought it for him. Money was exchanged and a very happy eight year old set about putting the set together. He’s still going and probably won’t stop for hours.

At lunch L very spontaneously turned to us and said “Thank you for getting me the Lego Agent set.” My heart swelled with pride.

It’s not easy for most children to save, be gracious about a theft, understand the importance of a gift well earned and say “thank you” on their own terms but it is even harder for a very ego-centric child with Aspergers Syndrome. I am so proud of L. Not only has he learned the value of earning money, he has learned the value of working for something, the value of the different notes and coins, he has learned how to market his services and promote a business and he has learned about grace, kindness and love.

I haven’t done the peak hour commute to and from the city for nine years but last Thursday, I had the opportunity to don some “work” clothes, park my car at the train station and get the express to Central Station.

Not a day has gone by that I’ve missed going into the city for work. I’ve been into the city on the odd day to see Wayne at work or to attend an appointment at doctor row on Wickham Terrace, but walking around, watching office employees as they went about their daily grind, seemed really surreal to me. Everyone was dressed the same and had the same look of “just get me to the end of the day so I can self-medicate” written on their faces. To think, I used to be one of them, religiously following the same routine every morning. Nine years ago, I would get my muffin from the Muffin Break shop as I waddled to work (I was pregnant) on the other side of town. I would always take the same route and would always wait in the same place when catching the train home. Routines provide some comfort in a world full of strangers.

I could tell, last Thursday that I was an unwelcome site in the train carriage, an extra person taking up a precious seat, someone they hadn’t seen before. Who is she and will she be coming back again? I wondered what I would think if a stranger wandered into my routine world like that, unannounced.

When I headed for Central Station in the afternoon, I watched as everyone grabbed their free daily paper and rushed to their platforms. On the train, I looked out the window at a view I had not seen for years, mused over how that view had changed in nine years, and secretly admired the skill in some of the graffiti lacing the walls. Most just read their papers, head down, eyes averted, until they could escape the carriage and head home.

When I got home, it was 6.30pm. Wayne, who had taken the day off so I could speak at a conference, had made me dinner and the boys were bathed and ready for bed. I had seen them last at 7am but they were happy and running around as usual. Had they even missed me?

Soon, I may be faced with the prospect of having to make this experience my own routine and it’s a daunting prospect. I love my rural home, the activist work I do and raising my boys myself. I love working a few hours a week in a paid job that doesn’t infringe on my family’s needs. I love working from home and having my lunch breaks out on the deck, overlooking the river valley. I love working in solitude and silence. The thought of having to hand my boys over to others for 12 hours of the day so I can join the daily rush, surrounded by strangers is heartbreaking for me. Can I really do this? Do I really have to? On the flipside though, I’m curious about this other world. I’m curious about whether my experience from the last nine years– doing on and off PR work and research work, some paid, some not—will be taken seriously or whether I’ll be cast into the box of “mothers trying to return to the work force” forever more.

Lately, I’ve been investigating the possibilities around home educating. I was watching D at school one day and it suddenly hit me that he would never do all those things that most “normal” children do and to be honest, I don’t want him to. That day, a storyteller came to school and he had every Prep child engaged in his flamboyantly presented tale…. Every child, except for D. While all the children sat there attentively and chimed in when expected, D climbed over the fence, under a chair and swung around the poles in the undercover area. Daniel dances to his own tune, his own rhythm.

The boys have this book that my husband reads to them (now off by heart as he’s read it soooo many times) called “Giraffe’s Can’t Dance”. In the book the giraffe decries his lack of dancing ability but in the end, he discovers that he has his own unique style. He declares that “we all can dance… when we find the music that we love.”

So, I came to a cross roads. Do I send the boys to school next year and watch them struggle or do I just dive in and try out home schooling? L has struggled with boredom this year because he’s not being challenged and can’t navigate the whole social thing because he doesn’t understand how to interpret people’s body language and spoken language for that matter. D has had a great year in Prep with a lovely, compassionate teacher but next year, in grade one, I’ve been told he’ll find it difficult coping with the rigours of learning to sit still, moving from one activity to the next in the space of 20 minutes, writing and reading when he’s only just learning to talk in full sentences.

And there’s a whole other set of questions. How do I home school? There are a myriad of styles. I am learning as I go that my style (or ideal style I should say) is to allow learning to happen naturally rather than doing “lessons” or “teaching school at home”. However, that said, I have one child who thrives on routine and structure.

L is extremely self-directed and he does a lot of extra activities at home with no encouragement from me (that is not to say I don’t encourage him, just that he starts these projects of his own volition). When he gets excited about something, writing, reading and learning the history behind something comes naturally. Lately, its “dragons”. He’s being playing a computer game about dragons where he has to read the instructions and dialogue between characters before he can play different aspects of the game. One morning I came into his room to find it littered with cardboard. He’d made a 3D cardboard dragon and was half way through colouring it in red when he ran out of ink. The next day I found a book at the supermarket called “The Dragon Chronicles’ which had all kinds of pictures and curious facts about fictional dragons. In L’s learning life, I take on the role of facilitator rather than teacher. I help him find information and activities related to whatever it is he is interested in at the time and the learning flows from there.

D, on the other hand is not yet at the stage where he will make things or look up information on the internet. He’ll play games and is learning how to conquer Super Mario Galaxy but he lacks confidence in holding a pen and generally doesn’t do craft activities like L and A do. He will however, sit and play in the dirt for an hour at a time, chattering away to himself. He will play physical games such as “king of the mountain”, “hide and seek”, “What’s the time Mr wolf,” etc. He’ll often engage his younger brother in play and will willingly participate in play scenarios set up by L as well. Because of his language deficits, I wonder if I need to do something more structured for D. I’ve been offered support by his lovely special ed teacher, by his speech pathologist and by his Prep teacher but I’m unsure about the path we’ll take to learning as yet. Is it possible to unschool one child and home school another?

Anxiety. Egg shells. Every word spoken needs to be thoroughly thought through. Eye contact must be maintained. I will myself to do it. I can’t do this. Not today. I am tired. We are waiting in the chiropractor’s office for an appointment. He’s never late. We are always on time and yet there are four people in front of me. L will be waiting for me at school but I must get D to this appointment. He needs it and will be a nightmare if he’s not adjusted. I will be a nightmare too. I need my fix.

I ask for a favour and explain my child will think I’ve abandoned him if I don’t show up at school on time. It’s 40 minutes away. The secretary tells me it isn’t fair to move me up in front of the others. Stares. Glares. I don’t care. I scream at her. I sit down shaking and sobbing. Somebody walks in and sits down. She asks me if I’m okay. I yell at her. “No I’m not okay. Does it look like I’m okay?” Uncomfortable silence follows.

My façade of perfect manners abandons me. It is a like a beast inside I cannot control. It yearns for escape in the tiredness, the fog of busyness that is my life and I lose it. Anger Does Have a Downside. It all resurfaces. I apologise a week later. “It’s okay, everyone has a bad day occasionally,” says the secretary. But I know she won’t forget. Nobody ever does, do they?

My middle son D doesn’t ever lie.

Me: “Did you hit your brother?”

D: “Yes”

Me: “Did you eat that last cookie?”

D: “Yes”.

For my eldest son, D’s honesty is a revelation. My eldest has been known to tell some whoppers and went through a spell where he’d tell lies all the time, primarily because he was afraid that if he told the truth, he’d be punished. Thing is, mothers always know and little boys always get found out. Writing lines, going to rooms, naming and shaming… they’ve all failed. But when L discovered that D was let off easier for telling the truth, it finally sunk in and he stopped telling lies.

Lying is actually a sign of high intelligence according to some books I’ve read. It’s not that Daniel is not intelligent. He is. He is just incapable of lying because he sees the world differently. He calls a spade a spade. Everything is literal, factual and real. If it isn’t, it doesn’t exist. That’s not to say that D doesn’t know how to play tricks on someone. He does that very well, just for fun offcourse.

L, who has turned lying into an art form, is perplexed by his brother’s honesty. He sees lying as a quick way to get the parents off his back, as a means to an end. Lying is a strategy. What gets me is that he doesn’t seem to feel the least bit of guilt or remorse, unless he’s found out.

Whenever I’ve told a lie, either intentionally or unintentionally, I feel horrible. I obsess about it and decry my lack of moral fortitude. I try not to lie to my kids but sometimes an easy answer just slips out.

L: “Mum, why can’t I have such and such”

Me: “Because we’re broke and I’d have to sell the car in order to pay for it.”

Well, maybe I don’t go that far but as a parent it can be challenging to be that beacon of morality you want to shine onto your little ones.

Perhaps I should just be content if they appear to catch even a glimmer of that light. Perhaps I should stop expecting perfection of them and myself or perhaps I should just look for the entertainment value in a son who lives in a fantasy world and another who is so grounded in what is real.

I have often felt isolated from the world of motherhood, despite my immersion in it. There are rituals, and rites of passage that most mothers take for granted… like the first words your child speaks or the first outing to the community fair or visit with Santa at the local shopping mall. Our lives revolve around three full-on little boys, one of them who has been diagnosed with Autism. So life is different for us.

Being a parent of a child with Autism is not like being a parent of a child with some visible disability. My child looks normal. It’s only when another child enters his space uninvited or he opens his mouth to speak or his obsessive compulsive behaviour plays out that people see a different side to him. In the first instance, other mothers look shocked and react quite defensively when their child is hit or kicked or worse. In most cases, a quick explanation of my child’s disability suffices to diffuse the situation. In some cases it does not. I’ve had people tell me to control my child, teach him manners (like that means anything to an Autistic child) and I’ve even had a police officer threaten to arrest me for being a negligent mother because my child nearly strayed into the path of an oncoming car in a shopping centre car park. He had told me to buckle my child into our hot car while I loaded the groceries in. What he didn’t know was that my child had a compulsion to jump into the boot while I did that task and would have untangled himself from any Houdini-locked device in a flash despite my best efforts. I’ve had old ladies lecture me on the virtues of leaving my children at home while I do the grocery shopping and I’ve had people yell at my child and reduce him to a catatonic state because they misunderstood his disability for misbehaviour.

Isolation comes in many forms. When Daniel was little I had to pull him out of playgroups, activities and limit outings to manageable events. A sad day for me was being told by another mother that I should stop attending the mother’s group I helped to found in my local area because my child was too aggressive. It was tactfully put to me that my child was ‘obviously stressed and not coping’ and that maybe a smaller group would be ‘more appropriate’. She was concerned for the safety of other children–I got it–but it hurt nonetheless. We were forced out of a network of friends when I badly needed support.

Since that time I have found solace in my friendships with other mothers of Autistic children. My friend Jamie* at my sons’ school summed it up when she said: “I don’t talk to the other mothers outside class. They all sit there and compare their children’s performance and I just don’t fit in. They really don’t give a sh*t!” And that about sums up the experience of motherhood for most of us.

Last year I was privileged to get to know a small group of other mums through Autism Queensland’s (AQ) early intervention program. We met at the school gate each morning (ummm, actually it was more like a locked fortress really) and chatted while our children attempted to play with each other… or was that beat each other up?… It was hard to tell sometimes. Nevertheless, we formed a lovely supportive circle and were there to give hugs and pass the tissues when one of us inevitably was having a crap day. I miss them dearly.

Another opportunity I had to connect with other mothers in my world was at AQ’s Mother’s Camp. It was there I met my beautiful sole sister Jennifer*. At that time I was still coming to terms with and grieving over my child’s disability and many of the mothers at camp had been there done that. Jennifer was about the only person who seemed to meet me where I was at. In some ways, I felt like the other mothers tried to out do each other with their tales of woe in a “who has the most stuffed up life?” competition. Jennifer and I had long conversations about spirituality, childbirth (she was pregnant at the time), shed tears over the movie Sense and Sensibility and spent time appreciating all the little gifts that life had on offer for us.

When I was in hospital recently, Jennifer phoned me to give me some encouragement and shared that her new baby was very sick with a rare form of Leukaemia. However, she was so gracious about it and so strong. It made me want to be stronger and humbled me deeply. I can’t wait to see her again!

I am grateful for the mums and children I have come to know through my journey and grateful for the understanding that comes with experience. However, I still feel jealous of mums who can take their children out to see a show or to a fair, who can feed them regular food without worrying about an additive-induced meltdown, who can do school holiday activities without having to worry about whether or not their child will beat up some poor unsuspecting pre-schooler that happens to stray into their path and without having to worry about vigilantly watching their child all the time in case they run off into the distance, run into traffic or drown in the nearest body of water.

Is it too much to ask to want to do all those things that most mothers take for granted?

*Names changed to protect my friends’ privacy.