ONE STEP AT A TIME

Toni-Louise Worthington was told by doctors her son would never walk, but Oliver was determined to prove them wrong

- FIONA KINLOCH, RIA NEWMAN

As a parent, the excitement you feel in each of your child’s milestones is unrivalled. The first time they smile, sit up, or crawl, is met with a huge round of applause. And when they take their first wobbly steps, a look of determination on their face before they drop to the floor with a huge smile, Mum and Dad are usually blinking back happy tears, holding up a camera to capture the moment. I imagined all those things when my son Oliver was born. What I didn’t imagine was hours spent at hospital, hundreds of tests and machines to help him do the things we take for granted. Yet, now, the sense of pride I feel when he reaches a milestone is overwhelming – because of just how much we’ve been through to get there.

My fiancé Stephen and I had always wanted children, so when I got pregnant in late 2015, we were thrilled. After a textbook pregnancy, we welcomed Oliver in July 2016, weighing 8lb 14oz. His birth was complicated as he got stuck, which was a life-threatening complication, and I suffered from polyhydramnios – a condition where there’s too much amniotic fluid surrounding the baby. Despite it all, he arrived healthy, had a dark head of hair just like his dad, and dark eyes like me. And as I held him for the first time, I couldn’t believe we had made something so perfect.