I was sitting in a pub in London last Thursday, waiting to meet a deaf young woman interested in coming to work as an intern at our school, with Ivy asleep in the pram beside me. I was wondering what the other people there must think, irresponsible mother bringing sleeping baby into noisy pub, and I thought a bit more about the noise and realised that a noisy pub might be fine for the deaf person I know (being that she can't hear a thing), but the person I was meeting was not profoundly deaf, so probably needed a much better acoustic environment to hold a conversation with me. I looked up the sign for 'noisy' on my trusty little app, and could ask her when she arrived if she wanted to go somewhere else because it was so noisy in there. 'Noisy' and 'London' have the same sign, circling the dominant index finger beside the ear.
http://bslsignbank.ucl.ac.uk/dictionary/words/London-1.html
London was indeed noisy, but also visually noisy, exciting, inspiring, and hope-instilling. Ivy and I had a wonderful day together on Thursday, first visiting what I hope will be her nursery and primary school, taking a tour, meeting lots of deaf kids, deaf staff members, hearing BSL users, and generally wonderful people. For the two hours that we wandered around the school with the head teacher, Ivy was more engaged than I've ever seen her before. Waving her arms around and kicking her legs like a duck in water, watching all the kids signing, welcoming us, asking us questions: "Is the cute baby deaf?" I was so relieved to be there with her, spending time with people who understand how Ivy needs to communicate. It was a happy day.
We spent the afternoon at the Remark! offices crawling around the floor being cute and adored by all the deaf and hearing staff members (Ivy), and learning how to describe animals with my first in-person BSL lesson with Deborah, who teaches us for four of the five hours a week (me). Describing animals, as well as being part of the BSL Level 1 curriculum, is particularly useful for picture books such as "That's not my monkey", "Dear Zoo", and "The Gruffalo". Although Ivy is not so good yet at looking at the book AND at the reader. We're working on it - I have found that the best way of sitting to encourage this eye gaze thing is Ivy on the couch and me on the floor in front of it, so the book is around my eye-height. Slightly awkward but do-able. Anyway.
I really was very emotional and moved on Thursday, sharing with Ivy the first day she spent in the deaf community. We must have met about 40 deaf people in one day, after having met one, a three year old, in Switzerland in the three months since Ivy's diagnosis. It felt like a homecoming of sorts, and confirmed that the big city is where we need to be. But more about those plans later. The rest of our visit was a family weekend run by the amazingly supportive and wide-reaching charity the National Deaf Children's Society. We holed up in a hotel in the middle of nowhere with about 12 families with newly identified deaf children - the youngest children were four month old twins, one hearing one deaf, and the eldest was seven and also recently diagnosed. In between there were families who had been to hell and back with meningitis, and a couple more adorable little girls Ivy's age. It was a weekend of much information, a view down the future track of Education, Health and Care Plans, fights with local authorities and schools to get services, but mostly solidarity and support. We made some lovely new contacts, and felt that we have a place to go to with any questions, requests for support, and fights to be fought. Anyone who has ever volunteered for, worked for, donated to or otherwise supported a charity that does work like that, thank you from the bottom of my heart. You can not imagine the strength gained from sitting in a room full of people who have some understanding of your deepest, darkest fears about your child's future, even if it's not articulated, including professionals (a speech and language therapist, for example), who dished out practical tips to support communication, and most importantly, reassurance.
Back home now we are struggling a bit with colds and catching up on missed work and laundry, as you do after running away for five days, and the magnitude of decisions we need to make about what our little family's future will look like is not helping things. It is frustrating knowing what's out there in terms of support for Ivy's language development, and being stuck up here on the mountain does not feel great. I wish I could pop over to London every Wednesday morning for the drop-in session at the nursery at the school for deaf children! At least we are learning a lot and signing more and more at home every day. That is a good start. And we have lovely, supportive, generous friends and colleagues here who are learning along with us and playing, talking and engaging with Ivy in beautiful ways.
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