Now, that’s something that, that perhaps I could say to parents that no matter how awful it is now time does put it in perspective. We, we were fortunate in that her surgery was done and dusted and we have weve walked away from it all but for blips and check ups. You know, I’m sure there are parents who would long for that but time heals. Theres nothing like a platitude is there?

And both my husband and I, I think we supported each other in that shes mended, shes sorted, it’s done, it’s dusted, and I think that’s the only way to be isn’t it, perhaps because it was. You can’t wait, I worry occasionally, once in a blue moon. It happens, when there was this article about fertility and problems and with children who’d had soya milk, I thought, ‘Oh god’, you know, so that sort of kicks it up and puts it into focus again. I wonder what it would be like for her having children, you know if that’s going to be a problem. We were told that that the stitches, there can be some narrowing of the vessel, the blood vessels where the stitch, stitches are. And I was slightly anxious occasionally. When sort of around nine, ten, eleven, I suppose, when she was growing quite quickly, if she ever got a bug, then I think, ‘Oh you know, is she all right?’ I think that you think it’s just another thing. So I suppose it’s just another ornament on the shelf, you know it’s there but you don’t really, it’s part and parcel of her, really. But don’t worry about it over much at all, just let her, you know, carry on regardless.

And I spent a small fortune on different sorts of teats and sterilising needles and making holes bigger and doing different systems and I’m sure that the chemist thought I was barking. And I think by this time I probably was a bit post-natal, absolutely obsessed with her gaining weight and her feeding and what was happening. And finally the Health Visitor said ‘put her on a bottle, this is just you’, and I felt such a failure, I felt such a failure.

So we did. We got formula milk and we started giving her bottles. Which was a nightmare because she wasn’t really interested. And feeds would take, feeds with a bottle would take sort of 3/4 of an hour or an hour, an hour and but she did seem to thrive a little bit more because at this time she was practically off the percentile chart. She wasn’t quite off it but she was. And various Health Visitors would, they would weigh her and they’d measure her head and because there was some growth then that was OK. And, this is with hindsight, everybody looked at their little part of what they should be doing and if there was a tick, if they’d checked it and it was OK, nothing wrong there, then that was it. Nobody ever sort of referred on. And also everybody looked at me, they didn’t actually look at my baby. They didn’t really consider her. And they didn’t refer on because they looked at her and yes there was some increase in weight, yes there was some, you know her head, head was obviously growing so therefore she was growing a little bit and because she wasn’t off the percentile, because she was just staggering along it, then I would get sort of repeated stories of ‘Oh babies that they knew that all of a sudden just raced away. You think ‘I don’t want to know that. This is me.

And then he said you know, ‘I think, I think that her heart is, shes in heart failure. Which was something I could understand. [Pause] And then it was just waiting while they sorted out where she was going to go and what was going to happen and my husband and I were sort of absolutely ‘Oh, oh,’ you know, this is ‘What, where, why, what and how?’

And then we, then it was transferring to the other hospital in an ambulance and she, she had some sort of little, little sort of oxygen tent and it was so bizarre from going to, you know, that morning when I’m walking around carrying her, making toast and peanut butter for her sister, you know, sort of with your baby and sort of thinking ‘Oh, you know, another load of nappies to do’ to being, you know, with your baby sort of being given oxygen because theres something really, really wrong with her. And it, it was bizarre, bizarre. I kept thinking ‘This isn’t really happening.

Although in some ways, in some ways it was easier because, you know, God knows I didn’t want to be proved right like that, but there was something the matter with my baby. [Pause] And you know it was, it, it, and it was sort of release and relief to think that.

I don’t’ know, it’s like, I don’t think there was ever, was never a sit down and I’m going to tell you. I think partly because check-ups, were, you know, going to the hospital for a check-up, I suppose as she started to grow and develop her memory, she would remember doing it. We had photographs. Were a great family for photograph albums and kids, you know, the kids look, love looking through them. And weve got photographs of her in hospital, my brother came down to see her, or up to see her and took some photos, so weve got those. And she was christened in hospital, when she was in hospital. I just sort of hedged my bets as it were. You know and they’re sort of family photos that come out.

And I know she, when she started school and they’d get changed for PE somebody had asked her, one of her little friends had asked her and she said, she came home, she said, ‘Tsk, they asked what that was? And I said it’s where a tiger had clawed me, but it isn’t is it. And I said ‘No it isn’t, you know what it’s from, don’t you?’ And she said, ‘yes, my heart surgery. And from time to time, you know, weve talked about it. I mean the thing is children’s understanding, you can’t give them a whole piece of it, they’ve got to have a framework that bits stick to. Sometimes you tell them bits and it falls through but sometimes it sticks and then gradually they built up a whole picture.