Third birthday

For some of you it will probably seem like time has passed very quickly... For us, it feels like it has taken a very long time to get here!

Things are pretty stable at the moment, but occasionally we do get brought up short and are reminded of how difficult our 'normality' is. Last week, Sharon had a meeting with the educational professionals who are involved with James. This time last year, the tenor of our conversations was 'No one has any idea yet what difficulties (if any) James will have.' This has now changed - we have to face the reality that developmentally, James is making slow progress, bless him. The educational implications are that he will for the foreseeable future require one-to-one support at playschool and then at school. Ultimately it may be appropriate for him to be placed in a specialist unit.

Of course our experience of parenting only involves Morgan and James and we have always avoided comparison with other children. The drawback of this is that we are less aware of 'benchmarks'; in other words it didn't really hit us how much James was lagging behind until this meeting. Realistically this leaves us with a clearer sense of loss on James' account. Something which we must grieve for.

But make no mistake about it: our overwhelming feeling is gratitude for James' life. It is (and everyone seems to feel this way) a miracle that he is still with us. It is a miracle that he has reached his third birthday and other than his well-controlled epilepsy has no health problems that we're aware of - not even asthma (which would be a high risk given his very poor lung history).

And with Morgan, he has a lot to contend with, but when he is free of pain he is such a happy boy, like his brother. We have no regrets. Our boys are gorgeous - genuine treasures. I hope you will join us in wishing them a marvellous third birthday.

I will post some photos soon!