Transcript:
When my daughter Natalia was born, that was seven seven years ago now, most people would have thought that me having Deaf parents a Deaf husband that of course naturally I would have thought that I’d have Deaf children.
But it hadn’t occurred to me whatsoever it was just not a thought in my mind i’d seen a lot of our Deaf friends had children and they were all hearing so in my mind i thought that i would have a hearing child and that they would run and tell daddy when I wanted something because daddy couldn’t hear so I had this picture in my mind that my child would be like a helper to me when I needed to get my husband’s attention or tell him something. So, when Natalia was born she had her newborn hearing screening and of course you don’t know anything about the test or anything so I was told I can’t remember the exact terminology and words that they used but I knew that she didn’t pass the test and I started saying to my mum oh she couldn’t possibly be Deaf. That would be way too ironic
and then she had her second one and she didn’t pass that either.
And that was when I started to actually entertain the thought that she could be deaf.
Bbut still with an almost a disbelief because I didn’t know what newborn babies were like I’d never had one before and I thought well maybe she’s just sleepy and not responsive?
Then we had the ABR and I went with my mum as my husband Barry was at work and they gave us the news that Natalia had a severe to profound hearing loss and it came as a shock to me.
I remember I did, I cried, I was, I think now looking back I was crying because I wasn’t going to have that child that I thought that I was going to have.
You know, running around telling daddy what what I needed or what I wanted and I said to my mum she’ll never sing with me because to me music was a really important thing. I love music and my mum said to me straight away she said no yeah she will she’ll sign, she’ll sign and sing with you.
You know, who’s saying that straight away just put me in a whole different frame of mind and I just because I’d had so much experience of Deaf people growing up throughout my life. It’s been a really beautiful part of my life something that I’ve you know treasured and valued and I’m part of this of the Deaf community so I was able to then just have a huge sense of pride after that you know I had my moment of that picture in my mind of that child was not going to be the child that I thought but once I thought about the child that she would be she’d be a beautiful Deaf child who would sign and she’d be able to communicate just as well as anyone else just in our beautiful Sign Language. So, it came as a shock to to me and to my husband as well but we quickly you know turned it into something positive because we knew that she could achieve whatever she wanted it didn’t matter if she couldn’t hear, she would have access to everything anyway. We would make sure that she had access to everything and yeah I just think that there’s there’s a whole lot of beauty that Deaf children give to us.
They you know the language and the culture regardless of whether they get access to sound. It’s still such a beautiful thing and something that should be so treasured in this world.