Wholesome
I finally found a toy that looked like my brave girl.
Sarah Blackburn, 31, Reading
Perched in the hospital waiting room with my husband Jack, now 32, I pictured the chaos to come.
It was September 2020, and while I was 20 weeks pregnant, our firstborn Rory, was still only nine months.
We’d struggled when trying for Rory, so it’d been a shock when I fell pregnant so quickly the second time round.
And two children under two wasn’t going to be easy.
‘But think how close they’ll be,’ I smiled at Jack.
‘Best friends,’ he agreed.
So far I’d had a healthy pregnancy, just like I had with Rory. Only 20 minutes later, as I had our first scan, our bubble burst.
‘Your baby is missing their right forearm,’ the technician said, pointing at the screen.
My heart dropped as I listened to the technician explain.
Doctors didn’t know why our tot hadn’t developed properly, but they’d be born with a disability.
Stumbling out of the ultrasound suite and back to the car, I couldn’t stop the tears falling.
‘How will they cope?’ I choked.
I was terrified of the unknown.
Looking on Google later that day, I read some articles that cited pregnancy stress as a possible cause for limb differences.
‘You can’t blame yourself,’ Jack soothed, wrapping me in a big hug.
But it was hard. ‘I just don’t want them to struggle,’ I cried to Jack’s mum Toni, then 56.
‘We’ll love them no matter what,’ she said, reassuring me.
Despite our initial shock, the rest of the pregnancy progressed without any issues.
And on 29 April 2021, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. We named her Remi.
The moment the midwife placed Remi on my chest, my eyes anxiously flew to her arm.
She had no forearm – just as we had expected – her arm ended as a little nub.
It was her ‘Bubble’, as we decided to call it.
But then I was taken by her full head of blonde hair and adorable chubby cheeks.
‘She’s the cutest baby I’ve ever seen,’ Jack laughed, stroking her fluffy head.
For all the months I’d spent worrying about it, within hours of Remi’s birth, I’d forgotten all about her limb difference.
She was just Remi.
As months passed, she hit the same milestones that Rory had. In fact, her arm didn’t seem to bother her at all.
By seven months she was crawling one handed, racing after her big brother.
However some people asked nosy questions.
‘What happened?’ one said, peering into her pram.
Yet people mostly commented on her lovely hair.
She just had so much of it!
As time w
