It is said that there are five stages of grief that you go through when something really bad happens to you:
Shock/denial
Bargaining
Anger
Depression
Acceptance
In the days that followed I seemed to get past the shock/denial stage, and bypassed the bargaining, anger and depression stages. By the end of last week (5th October) I think I had already got to acceptance.
I decided in the middle of the week that there was no point in sitting and brooding over things, and that I wanted to do something positive. Inspired by The Rev David Southall, who is the Chaplain at the Worcestershire Royal Hospital and writes a blog on all the good news stories and good treatment that patients at the hospital have had, I decided to start my own blog and so “Baby and Cleft” was born. I hope that it will become a positive and inspiring resource for parents who have had children diagnosed with a cleft, and hope it will grow over time with parent interviews, positive stories, before/after photos and much more.
I also got in touch again with the Cleft Lip And Palate Association and expressed an interest in getting involved with them as much as possible. I want to raise as much awareness of the condition as possible and utilise my skills accordingly to do that. I have years of experience in PR, marketing, awareness raising and fundraising and more, and I would much rather use my skills to raise awareness and help other parents who have been diagnosed with the condition. I hope to be able to go to their next induction day, but it is a bit close to my due date!
So that about brings me up to date with my journey to motherhood and where I am now. From now on this blog/website will not only chart my own journey but feature others and their journeys. I also hope to launch the first in a series of weblogs on YouTube this weekend, which I will also post on this blog, along with informative news, information and articles.
So now it is over to you. If you would like to be featured on this blog as an inspirational success story, I would love to hear from you. I will be devising an interview questionnaire which I’d be happy to email out to anyone who would like to be featured, along with before and after photos, to celebrate all the very special cleft babies out there and their parents. It doesn’t matter where in the world you are, you don’t just have to be from the UK.
Get in touch with me via enquiries@babyandcleft.co.uk, I would love to hear from you and feature you success stories!
