Landed in London

Dear friends, 

It's October, and Ivy was a year and a half last week! That also means it's a year since our suspicions got the better of us and we took Ivy to the paediatrician and said "I think she’s deaf”, which to me now feels like the moment when we could start working out what we needed to do to give her a life true to her identity, her needs and her talents. 

And here we are in London. Ivy is doing really well here. She is signing, watching, communicating, playing, laughing, and now she is listening, babbling and saying some words. 

In her first language, BSL, she can tell us everything from "it's bath time" to "I want water" to "it's cloudy outside”, “the girl is sad” and "Pop is in Australia!”. She loves climbing on the fire engine in the playground, going up and down slides, looking for squirrels in our local park, declaring that things are "rubbish" and putting them in the rubbish bin, reading books on her own or with one of us, building towers and knocking them down, and pulling faces. Her current favourite sign is 'how are you?' delivered with a big smile, to anything and everything she sees, likes, and wants to engage with. Planes flying low over Queen's Park, ladies waiting for the train at the station, ducks on the canal, and her toy turtle in the bath. And me, when she sees me first thing in the morning. It's quite lovely. She picks up new signs almost instantly, and the pressure is on for our BSL learning. We are so very proud of how well she is communicating with us — like any toddler, she is shy signing with other people, and definitely won’t show off her extensive vocabulary (probably about 300 signs, maybe more) on command. But with us, she is a chatterbox!

We are still working on getting settled here. Ivy still hasn’t been to a CI clinic, we are waiting, waiting, waiting for an appointment. That is a big frustration, because she needs to have the mapping checked, now that it is clear that she is hearing speech. We have started speech and language therapy with local provision though, and are in an extremely confusing stage about how we should communicate with her - the balance between habilitation of the CI and using her natural first language. If you're interested in some of the quandaries, the comments section here is a pretty good summary if you read to the end. Having an appointment with the CI centre will help, I hope.

There are big uncertainties about whether we’ll be able to stay in London for the long term, because we just can not afford to rent a property here. We thought we would figure it out somehow, but short of praying for a miracle, there's not anything we can do. And it will be no surprise to any parents reading that the process of trying to figure out what is best for your child and what on earth you should be doing to facilitate that is a constant challenge and worry. 

We do have a nice weekly routine including a wonderful, wonderful drop-in play morning in the nursery at the bilingual school for Deaf children, a visit from a family sign language tutor/ Deaf mentor, and speech therapy. Ivy and I both love Wednesdays, when we go to the school in the morning, join the other children in the nursery, and she plays and chats with them and with the lovely staff members. She adores BSL story time and the lady who reads a story each week, with props galore. It is a beautiful thing, watching her interact with adults who use her language - she lights up. We have met some lovely local people, also with little kids, and are enjoying being so close to our friends in Birmingham and Cambridge, and the drop-in visits that occur from far-away friends who travel through London or pop by for a weekend.

I have a lot more to say, but will post this and write some more on other topics another day. It was time for a little update.

I do have a couple of links to share though, that have been important to me in recent times. 

This is from a while ago, but if you can track down the show, it's a great introduction into the London Deaf community: http://limpingchicken.com/2014/11/05/deaf-community-grayson-perry/ 

Scotland recognises BSL and sign language rights: http://limpingchicken.com/2015/09/18/bsl-bill/

AND, the highlight of our weekend was meeting this lovely person and her dad, at a BSL event at a museum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=655nxnpkkBw . We were fortunate enough to have lunch with them!