Education.....a minefield or an adventure

Keeping in mind that our foray into education is somewhat limited still but...this is what we've found so far....

You'll get three types of teachers and it seems to be the same from early childhood on onwards......

The first one simply doesn't believe in gifted children. This type is of the firm belief that they are simply brighter and therefore able to cope pretty much on their own. Very damaging.... the best way to have your child so bored out of their brain...nobody will know they have any ability at all, after a while.

The second believes in them alright - in fact, they are intimidated by them. The most damaging type of all - not only will you have a very bored child, you'll probably have a measure of depression to deal with as well.

The third is the one you want......this one not only believes in them but recognizes that they have as many needs as special needs kids. 

There's only one way to tell the difference. As I said earlier - just cut to the chase and ask them what their thoughts are on gifted children. If they look a little wild eyed and green about the gills...we run a mile - that person will not be a teacher that can cope or meet her needs, as far as we're concerned. 

We found a wonderful lady, by taking this approach who will be Sophia's new entrants teacher when she starts school. She lit up and her answer was that Sophia was obviously exceptionally gifted and that she was going to need as much assistance from the teacher aids as the special needs kids and that there were special programs we should get her into that will meet her needs better. You can't get a better response than that - that's the one you want to hear. 

The truth is, if you're lower income - you're not likely to be able to afford the fancy programs that are available for gifted kids. So you work with what you can. And what you can do....is match the teacher to her needs as best you can and meet the rest from home.

I'll keep you posted on any further developments on this issue!

Extensions on the Aha moments....

A wee extension to the 'Aha' post from here... http://ourrainbowrose.blogspot.com/2011/05/aha-moments.html

Another thing that turned our heads a bit was when somebody told us the expected attention span of a toddler which wasn't very high in our opinion. That was because Sophia has been able to watch things or play on the computer for anywhere between half an hour to two hours since before she was three. These days its a lot further and we regularly have to get her to come away for a breather or some fresh air and something to eat.

Yesterday (age four and half) she spent sometime setting the lounge up as a stage with books standing in for lights. She told me she was the Goddess of dance and music and she was putting on a show. I've no idea where that all came from but it was pretty cool and she danced for some time!

Having fun and being proud....

Well that's most of the nitty gritty stuff jotted down finally. Now for the great stuff!

Every child has a talent in something. If you allow them plenty of opportunities to go searching for that talent, chances are - you will uncover it. With a gifted child - at least one of those talents springs up early and is easily spotted. That in itself is pretty damn cool! You get the little buzz that a parent gets watching their child on stage on a regular basis. And the majority of gifted kids seem to be a bit of a dichotomy, which helps to keep your feet on the ground. While Sophia's reading and comprehension are years ahead of her age group, she is still very very four and there's something delightful about that. This is a child that is trying to use words we're already having to look up and can tell you how many sides to an octagon but she still refused to use the toilet until she was nearly three - until I made it pretty and not so-scary. And we are still saying when she gets upset - Sophia use your words...you need to tell us what's wrong.

Her father is openly proud too - naturally. When people ask if she knows her ABCs yet, he takes great delight in blowing them out of their seats. It's neat to watch (although it used to make me squirm a little - showing off always makes me uncomfortable) and sometimes she would look at him and flatly refuse. At which point I would laugh and say, "Dadda - I am not a performing seal!". These days she looks at him and says...."You read it!" and walks off. We had this word game which came about because when she saw us typing on the computer, she would want to get up and type too - so we'd push the text up to really big and make it red and when we used it to try and figure out how many words she could actually read, it evolved into a game - almost a party trick really. Ed would open MSword on a persons computer and tell people to spell out a word - he'd type it in and Sophia would proceed to blow their socks off.

And then there's her sense of humor. Quirky and slightly warped with a distinct sense of mischief. She could barely form a sentence when we first started to notice it. She and I had quite the regular debates about how good bogeys were (or not!) - all conducted with this naughty little grin twisting across her face – that must have been at about 18 months. She came up with her first joke about a month ago. We were working on our computers when she leaned over and said, “I have a joke!” I had the impression that she'd seen somebody else tell it before. It was a knock, knock joke…… knock, knock, who's there? Boo! Boo who? Awww no need to cry Mamma! She got all the right lines in the right place and she knew it - which clearly made her very pleased! She has games on word usage and pronunciation with her father and some of them are timed by where we are. For example going past the hospital, he'll say look its the horspatal at which point she'll correct him. If he doesn't start the game at the right time - she'll prompt him. She doesn’t have a hope of getting too crazy about correct pronunciation either because her father deliberately jumbles and adjusts words like supermarket becoming stooperdarket. Once upon a time she used to get quite concerned but now she delights in the game and again, she will start it off herself.

Proving things to her is sooo much easier too. If she’s got something not quite correct, you get her to read the label or the information. She will easily accept things if you can prove it. Once she asked me to make her hot cocoa (like curious George). When I got the cocoa out of the cupboard…at which point she got quite adamant that that was for hot chocolate. I said – it’s the same thing sweetie which she hotly contested. When she was shown the name on the box – end of discussion – all was good and we made hot cocoa.

Museums and galleries are great with a gifted child - even at an early age. Sophia likes bones, bugs and birds in particular. When we go - it's a whole morning. There's no 'popping in for a quick squiz' in these sorts of places...you go to spend real time, enjoy yourself and expand your own mind while you're encouraging her to expand hers.

And much to my delight, our lounge is frequently strewn with creative paraphenalia. Sparkles, seeds, glitter, bits of fabric, pretty stones, shells, foil bits and hand art. I delight in it because I was always being told off for it when I was a kid and I understand. Painting with various different implements, drawing, collaging and other creative projects are so important for any kid and Sophia seems to need it. It's good stuff for women who become too much of an adult and frequently forget to play!


  

More labels....

OCD. Sophia can get really, really anal about a number of things. I've mentioned the 'cracks' in her food earlier (cookies & ice creams etc). Cutting her food in front of her is ok now, providing you ask her first. The way her sandwiches were cut used to be an issue (I'll tell you how we got around that one a little later). Certain 'rituals' for her can't be adjusted without repercussion. For example, she and her father stop at the Fairfield dairy for a paddlepop ice-cream after he picks her up from kindy - everytime. When we are heading home from town, she expects us to stop at the 4-Square on Heads Rd. She will not understand why it can't be a different dairy and it will cause her some distress if they don't have what she likes to buy at that particular dairy. On the occasion we have been unable to stop - she has gotten very distressed. And there are many more examples......

Now you may be inclined to think....'spoilt little goblin' and sometimes that's probably true but really most of the time its not the case. Sophia does not understand why things have to be different and she gets very, very distressed about it. Not paddying - but distressed. Once upon a time she would react with absolute horror if you tore her sandwich in half (as you do when the sandwich is too big for a little one to handle). To her, it was completely ruined and she wasn't going to be able to eat it now. It had to be cut properly with a knife.

She is more adaptable now because while we allow her some rituals, we generally don't cater to the intensity of it. For example.....with her sandwiches, I will ask her if she wants triangles or rectangles and when she makes that decision - is it halves or quarters. Options are presented rather than just doing it the same way each time. when we arrive at the infamous Fairfield diary, she is reminded that she has a choice of three paddlepops. If we can't stop and we have to go straight home, we take the time to explain because unless you do, Sophia thinks you're just trying to mean to her and she does not forget it.

An odd reaction

In an earlier post, I mentioned being frightened of her abilities. This reaction was all my own and I definitely had to try and come to terms with it on the quiet. I have experienced doubt and ridicule while looking for advice on a number of occasions but I was intimidated by Sophia's abilities well before any of that happened. She was a tall poppy and in my family, tall poppies get cut off at the knees. I was almost ashamed because I knew that to stand out was to be a target. I was afraid of being accused of either being a loopy pushy mother or being proven wrong if put to the test, and made to look silly. All over-pleasing, socially-acceptable sillinesses.

And, to be fair to myself,  I was very much afraid for her. Bright kids get bullied - I've experienced it myself since the day I started school (and so had her father). Bright kids get left to fend for themselves. Bright kids have to settle to make room for others because they've got an advantage etc etc etc. Bright kids often get the rough end of the stick in my experience. I wanted better for her. So I put these fears aside and I decided teach her to that she is fortunate to have these abilities and that all she needed to do was to the best that she was able to do. 

And as for the ridicule....the professional types that do that soon can't help themselves and they've gotta test her. Then they understand. I don't need to push the issue. But that's kind of moot now because we've found its easier to just ask them what their thoughts are on gifted children. You find out what you need to know inside of a minute - they can't help themselves then either.

   

The logic of it all.....

When Sophia was about three it was fast becoming obvious that she wasn't the type to take everything you said as gospel. She and I had an interesting debate about knives around that very age. I had stated that all knives were sharp and that she shouldn't touch them because of that. At which point she picked up the butter knife that I had just made her sandwich with and demonstrated that this one, in particular, wasn't sharp at all. She pointed out the error in my statement...so I had to explain it further. As a result, she has been very wary of the types of knifes that cut and will even remind me to careful of them. For Sophia, this became a rule.

At one stage I did tell her that rules were there to keep us safe. To her - that's logical. Now...if its a rule....there's a good reason for it to be so. And if we want her to understand and accept the importance of something - we will tell her it's a rule and woe betide the poor soul to break it.

One example of how strongly she will adhere to a rule is her attitude to matches. She was playing with a little girl out on a camping trip when they came across a box of matches not so long ago. The other child jumped on them saying, 'ohhh! a box of matches' just like they normally do. Sophia fled, yelling 'NO NO NO' at the top of her lungs, bringing it to the attention of the adults pretty quickly.

It hasn't entirely been a boon - we did come a cropper with this a wee while back - not in an unmanageable way though. It definitely helped that  we understood the way Sophia thinks about rules, ahead of time. She started ballet this year because she'd been watching it on TV and was keen to join in so she went to the littlelies class where they just learn to enjoy dance and stretch and get the hang of co-ordination and movement. In this class the teacher had said that the children were not to touch certain things (balls & props) until it was their turn to touch them - "that is the rule". Well Sophia took it on herself to be the one to point out to every child that broke that rule, how naughty they were. We handled this by teaching her about roles. For example, it was the teacher's job to worry about whether or not the other children were behaving and it was Sophia's job to have fun and play. So as time went on, she didn't get so upset by the rules being broken. We are very lucky that she can understand the finer details there.

Another area where Sophia's 'mode of logic' seems to come into things is with her social responses. Even now she seems to acknowledge that that's whats expected of her but it doesn't seem to make much sense to her. My husband thinks that this could be an indication of possible Aspergers and he could be right but Sophia is bright enough to work her way around it so we are not concerned. When somebody says, 'Good morning' we've often got to tell Sophia how to respond. For a child with an impressive memory, it's surprising. But if you tell her the correct response, she will humor you. Although whether or not this has everything to with her personal foibles is also questionable. She often doesn't seem aware that the person is addressing her - as if she's not mindful that greeting people is what everybody does when they see you. With this one, we're not going to know for sure where she's coming from until she's a bit older I think. We'll keep you posted.

Freak out!

Basically it seems better described as heightened sensitivity which, in young children, means frequent overload. My mother initially thought it was just normal toddler paddying - that it is until she actually saw Sophia freak out one day. Sophia would react to somethings (and sometimes still does although not to the same degree) with total distress and it was almost as if she literally could not respond to you trying to soothe her. To touch her or try to talk to her further was to add to the over-stimulation, making it worse.

She would react badly to things like cutting her food up in front of her......in particular eggs. For some reason she just couldn't cope. You could cut up her food where she couldn't see it and give it to her but if you cut it up in front of her, she would start to 'wail' and go fetal on the floor. It was much more than crying but not quite screaming. And if you tried to pick her up and hold her - it would escalate into terror. Thrashing and screaming and trying to get away back into the fetal position.

We counteracted this with a patient re-education approach. I would stand there, without touching her and say, 'Get off the floor Sophia.' Every time it happened, I said the same thing, the same way. After about 3 weeks, she started to respond to it. The crying would lessen and she would start to get off the floor. That was the signal that it was okay to pick her up and comfort her. I must have looked liked the coldest bitch to some people - just standing there, not trying to pick her up and help her. But eventually, the time between me saying....'Get off the floor Sophia' and the time it took for her to respond, got shorter and shorter. And later on I could actually adjust it and say, ' I know you're upset but you need to get off the floor'.

She still gets upset with things like cracks in her food such as biscuits or ice creams (iced lollies) but each time, we've told her that we don't worry things like that.....and that it will still taste good. Now that she is able to express herself better, she will often say, 'it's all ruined' or 'everything's ruined,' which to her means no good any more - at all - ever. The response to that is, 'no its not - we'll see what we can do.' Working that way, we've encouraged her to rethink possibilities and it seems to be working well.

She was (and still is a bit) extremely sensitive to loud noise. Her reaction was to get extremely distressed and go fetal on the floor, then that lessened into clapping with her hands over her ears and trying to hide. Now its just standing there with her hands over her ears, while she tries to work out what the sound is. Most sounds that she knows, she will re-iterate with us what she thinks it is and we'll either verify or explain what the sound is and why she shouldn't be concerned.

Some people have suggested high-functioning autism and Aspergers and for a short while there, I was tempted to have her tested but there is a tendancy to label things early when perhaps it might be better to wait and see how things pan out. The medical profession have clear 'boxes' that they like to put people in which would be good except that very few people actually fit those boxes.

I was approached by a woman while we were camping who explained a very interesting idea to me. Sophia was very distressed at camping because we couldn't meet her 'morning ritual' requirements. She couldn't cope with such an abrupt set of changes and it wasn't surprising - most adults would probably have trouble too. This lady noticed that special kind of crying that Sophia was doing and she came over and offered to help. She told me about her daughter and a diagnosis that she was given when they were having similar issues. It wasn't so much of a diagnosis, she explained, more of  an explanation - one that made a lot of sense to me.

Apparently 15 percent of the population are born this way and its not an illness or a syndrome of any kind - their brains are simply wired differently. They are the children that people often call oversensitive. Basically it's related to the two types of response to danger - fight or flight. The kids who are more brawny in attitude (the rugby types) that run around bruising the crap out of themselves and other people (without meaning to specifically)...are more inclined to be the stand and fight kind of people. The flight kind of people are literally more sensitive - they pick up on danger signals so that they have the time to flee danger. These kids tend to be a bit more intelligent. In kids like Sophia, the sensitivities often run alongside in strength with their gifted capabilities. Because we can literally train her out of her initial reactions, I don't believe its any form of autism.

Its simply the way she is and that's ok.

The 'Aha' moments.....

So when does any parent really start to wonder if their child might be gifted? There are little signs that make you wonder a bit. She knew her alphabet before she was two. We thought....'that's kinda cool' and somebody mentioned that that might be more than 'cool' and perhaps moving into the very bright arena. We thought she was fairly bright but that perhaps we were seeing more potential that was a bit more obvious because of extra encouragement. After all, Sophia had had more exposure to computers and educational TV than the average child.

There was another time, I remember pretty clearly, also when she was two. We're sitting in the lounge one day and Sophia marches up to me with a little stone pyramid that normally sat on a small bookshelf. She said, "Mamma! This is a pyramid - it has four sides!" I said, "That's nice dear, now take it out of your mouth." It was funny and cute but we just did the whole...isn't she a clever wee thing!

It really sorta dawned on us that perhaps it was a little more than 'fairly bright' when we were at the library one day when she was about two and half. In fact it more bowled us over a bit. I got hold of a book that I thought she might get a kick out of. It was different arrangements of food cut up to look like different objects like planes and people and see-saws etc. I put it down in front of her and she announced the title of the book - 'FOOD' - very clearly. I kind of looked at her and went, 'really? no way! she must have figured out what it was by the pictures on the front.' So we start going through this book and she's carrying on her little trick and that's when I noticed she was naming intangible things that she might not have gotten from the pictures.

The first book at 2 and a half

I did a bit of a double take and then I thought, 'ok Missy Boo-boo - lets just have a look at what you can really do then.' I rummaged through till I found a fairly simple level one reader and I gave it to her. She read it cover to cover on the spot. I just about fell over backwards. I knew damn well that this was very different to what I was familiar with and I knew that I had never known anybody who could read at two and a half.

I went home and told her father.

Then we went and asked a few people what they would do, how they would handle it and just how far outside of the box is this? One thing in particular that was mentioned to us was the issue of comprehension. One teacher said that she had come across children learning to read early (although none so young as Sophia) but most of them could read the words but didn't understand them. Not only did Sophia understand them but by the time she was three and half, she was using conceptual words in the correct context. I do remember having a wee debate about the usage of one word (unfortunately I can't remember which one) that could be applied the way she was using it, if you took the literal meaning of the word, but it wasn't quite the way that word was used - the context wasn't correct. It was quite funny trying to explain to her the why's and in the end I just said that the English language was a bit silly sometimes because most of its words were borrowed from other languages.

The thing is her age never really impacted on us until that moment when we actually took stock of how old she was. This is because it is very easy to forget how old they are. It's only now that I'm writing it all down and taking note of things happening at certain ages that I'm sitting here thinking.... holy crap - well duh! lol

Mind nutrition....

Sophia's room has always been bright and busy from the start. Not deliberately - thats just the way it kinda panned out.....I thought one thing might be nice and then something else might work well with it and so on. Many people said that her room was too bright from the start and there's no way she'd sleep and you would think that they might have been right but she slept in our room with us till she was nearly 9 months old and wouldn't sleep there either so who knows! The reason why I'm putting this in is because of a study that I had read about years and years and years ago that left me wondering....

This scientist decided he was going to try and acertain exactly what newborns and babies looked at. He discovered that they look directly at edges like the outline of their mothers face or the bars of their cot. And not only that, he discovered that when they look at edges, their brains are stimulated. Hmmmm.......something to think about perhaps?

And of course, there's books. Books, books and more books. We have read to Sophia everyday of her life because she has always enjoyed it. The first books we  showed her tended to be basic color, number and picture books.

We had our first indicators that she was absorbing more than we thought when we were at a playgroup that we would frequent once a week. They had something on the TV to do with colors and shapes and things - the normal child development kind of programs you get. Sophia runs up to the TV and slaps her hand on a shape that was blue and shouts, "BLUE!" She must have been about 16 months old. Somebody said...."that's impressive," and I thought - "It is?". A couple of months later, she was shouting out the letter's of the Alphabet in a school my husband worked at.

The importance of nutrition

I know that some women are unable to breastfeed and I'm sure there are plenty of gifted children out there whose mothers couldn't but I have to say that if you can....definitely do.
I have a friend whose nutritional philosophies match my own and her wee daughter is showing very very similar hallmarks.

If you are able to breastfeed - please please watch what you eat. Cut out as many artificial colours, artificial sweeteners, preservatives and msg as you can. And stay the hell away from coke and pepsi.

The reason why I advocate breastfeeding is mainly because of fat, believe it or not. I fed Sophia for as often as she wanted and as long as she wanted. She was fed totally on demand. And because I was always having trouble getting her to sleep, I would feed her till she went to sleep on the boob. This meant that she was always getting the precious high-quality 'hind milk'.

For those that don't know....in human breastfeeding there are two levels of feeding.....the first is quantity to satisfy hunger quickly but the second is rich-high-fat 'hind' milk. That's the stuff that builds synapses or connections in the brain. And once the connections are there, the fat coats them and protects them. Or at least that how it was explained to me.

When they start on solids....(which for Sophia was at 5 and a half months) keep up with the high quality fats....like butter and avocado. Sophia's first foods were also Kumera and pureed fruit.

To make sure she had all she needed while making the transition to solid food, we followed traditional Maori philosophies concerning the length of time to wean. The child stops when they are ready, if the nutritional needs are being met. If she didn't ask for it, I didn't offer after the age of 18 months. Sophia stopped asking for milk just after her second birthday.

Computers and babies....?

4 months old

We did do something that, unbeknownst to us, was fairly frowned upon but being computer nerds, we never thought anything of it at the time. When Sophia and I were in the computer room and her father was on his computer, she would want to get up to be with him. Now you may ask - how does a child that age show you that she wants to join her father? Well she just did and I guess that might have been an indication there were perceptions there that wouldn't ordinarily be there in a child that age but we literally didn't think about it then. She was our first child so we didn't have anything to compare it to. I was the oldest of four and I do remember thinking that it was a little odd and I couldn't seem to remember my brothers and sisters doing things like that. But then I put it down to being a proud mother - bordering on loopy perhaps. I did that for a long time because her abilities frightened me for the silliest reasons.

So every time she wanted to get to be up there with her father, he would start up a program called Sunshine Alphabet. This was one of the ways that taught her the alphabet. My husband has always said, 'dumb programs make dumb minds' so where we could, any exposure Sophia had to TV or computers was either educational or taught a good sense of ethics and behaviour. We use our computers everyday - for play and work and as a result Sophia was computer literate by the time she was three.

Current studies on the impact of computers and toddlers suggest that it's a bad bad thing because it limits their creativity. We have to disagree with that one. At four Sophia's mind is exploring all it can while making artwork and art projects just as creatively as the next child. Sometimes both at the same time. She does come up with some pretty odd names for her work though, I have to say - 'a cow called hydrolapidy' for example! I think it matters hugely what sort of programs you allow your children to play with. Interactive programs that encourage them to think and problem solve are invaluable. And giving them the opportunity to play in a creative manner makes a difference too. We get creative at home with creative play ALOT. Sophia has also had a couple of days at a playcentre or kindergarten from the age of three specifically so she could take advantage of the creative programs for toddlers and opportunities for social interaction.

On onwards.... to babyhood.

Our daughter is four now and she's just amazing. It's taken me this long to get down to writing a blog about our experiences. I've kinda held off because one of the things a parent of a gifted child often experiences is ridicule. Every time they try and find out if something is 'normal' or what they can do to encourage something - somebodies got to get their boot in because clearly - they're one of those 'loopy' parents that believe their child is special above all others. The fact is, you tend to know when your child is doing things that are a little odd for their age and that sends you out for answers. With a gifted child, you're out looking for answers all the time. And what makes it particularly difficult is that 'professionals' are often the worst to scoff.

There's a lot that I don't remember, I afraid. Key things that could be helpful but - keep an eye on things - and I'll slap them in when I remember them. I can't remember a lot about the early early days. They were pretty much a blur of new parenthood and sleeplessness. I can tell you that she often didn't sleep. Awake every half hour some nights. She didn't nap as a wee toddler either. And even now.....getting her to sleep is.....interesting. She often slept with me - even from the time we were in the hospital. Although its often frowned upon and people are slamming the practice heavily now - the nurses seem to understand that if she and I were going to have a chance at bonding, we had to sleep together.

She held her own head up, pretty much from the start. I think that could be because she didn't have to try and negotiate 'normal' birth. And she hated anybody touching her head - or her hands. I remember thinking how odd that was. When people touched her hands (as people often do with newborns) she managed to make it very clear that that was not allowed.

3 months old

She was noticeably strong-willed fairly early on. In this photo, her father was looking after her for an hour or so (while I took a break in the garden). He had her in the bouncer with a play-frame and she was getting quite shirty at him moving the toys. Each time she fell asleep, he would try to move them away from her and she would reach up to grab it and stop him taking them. She'd go back to sleep again, he'd try to move them again....she'd have to stop him - all the while barely opening her eyes.

Most of her baby milestones were fairly much on time I think. Some even seemed a little late. She was crawling at 7 months, walking at 13 months, first word at 14 months. Clearly she understood things alot earlier but with talking in particular, we had the impression that she didn't see the point of it. Her first word was UP and her first real sentence came four months later. She'd been playing with my bedside cupboard and announced, "It's a door."

From then on she just motored through things including the alphabet. Its almost as if she just decided from 14 months on, now was the time to get cracking. 'Ok, we're done with this baby thing now!'

 

Beginnings

Sophia was born in a storm in more ways than one.

Her parents were first time parents and were thoroughly bewildered by the medical mayhem surrounding modern birth. I was 39, very overweight, and very, very anxious and her father was 32 and simply coped as best he could by steadfastly putting one foot in front of the other and looking nowhere else.

Labour started fairly normally, except for the 40 minutes journey into the hospital because we lived rurally. Oh and the fact that she was posterior so I couldn't lay down or sit down. After 10hrs, my labour started going away so I was transferred to another hospital - another 45 minutes away. The ambulance was so crappy, they had to bash the docking clamps of the stretcher on and off with a tire iron. They wouldn't let Ed bring my stuff in the ambulance either so he had to travel behind it, worrying how I was all the way. After a total of 24 hrs in labour and no progress, it was decided that the only way she was going to be born was by c-section.

Amidst the flurry of an emergency C-section, the rain poured down, thunder roared and the lightening flashed outside.

And then after 25hrs, she was finally here...in the world with us. We had waited a long time and it was surreal. But we weren't through the birth experience yet. Almost as soon as I was out of surgery, nearly two hours later, I was clearly in trouble. They couldn't get enough oxygen into my blood so I was on oxygen for a time. Then I went down with childbed fever. For three and half days my temperature peaked and fell, peaked and fell, hitting almost 102 on the highs. And every time it peaked, the 'rigors' would start.

My poor little girl cried and cried but I often couldn't hear her. I think the drugs and the fever changed my smell because I do remember at one stage, every time they brought her near me, she screamed. And my poor husband walked up and down the corridors with her, trying to soothe her. There was nothing to soothe him - they wouldn't even give him a pillow to sleep on. They were feeding her with my milk - even though it was laced with the metrodiazinole that saved my life and I often wonder what it was doing to her little brain. It certainly screwed with mine. I couldn't tell time at all. If someone asked me if I'd had anything to eat - I couldn't tell whether it had been five hours or five minutes. Did you know that you have a little 'timer' in your brain that gives you an indication of how much time has passed? It works even while your asleep - how remarkable. I had so many drips in both hands - I still have scars. When I came out of the fever, I couldn't believe that I had been in the hospital for five days. One day more and the 'miracle of birth' was finally over and we all went home.

I'm sad that the most important event, to happen to her father and I, had such an awful start but in the end - we all came through it. We all survived - mostly intact. And the blessings thereafter have been truly extraordinary.