My 7-year-old son began sleeping under his newborn sister’s crib—when I overheard what he whispered to her at 2 A.M., I went pale.
My 7-year-old son began sleeping under his newborn sister’s crib—when I overheard what he whispered to her at 2 A.M., I went pale.
Hospitals & Treatment Centers
Ivo asked for a sibling for four years.
He asked at Christmas, at birthdays, and once, memorably, to a woman in a supermarket queue who he had decided looked in charge.
He was three when he started and he was seven when it finally happened, and in between there were two losses that he did not know about and one round of treatment that he did.
So when we told him in January that his sister was coming in June, he lay down on the kitchen floor. Just lay down flat on his back on the tiles with his arms out, which is a thing he does when something is too big.
Babies & Toddlers
We found out about the Down syndrome at the twenty-week scan on the eleventh of January, and it was confirmed by amniocentesis on the twenty-fourth.
I am not going to pretend Ewan and I sailed through that. We didn’t. There were about six weeks in there that were hard, and there was a lot of information, and there were two appointments where I did not take in a single word that was said to me.
Ivo did not need six weeks.
Family
He needed about four minutes, most of which he spent asking whether she would still like the same things as him.
Wynn was born on the third of June, 2025, at 6 pounds 4 ounces.
Ivo held her on the fourth, in a hospital chair, with a cushion under his arm.
And he looked at her for a long time and said, “She’s perfect.”
He has said a great many things in seven years and that is the one I would keep.
He picked her going-home outfit. He sang to her — badly, loudly, mostly songs he made up — every time she cried, and he had a strike rate of about sixty percent which is better than mine.
Locate Medical Centers
He showed her photograph to the man at the corner shop, our postman, and a bus driver.
We came home on the fifth.
My mother-in-law arrived on the sixth.µ
