Laura’s name was announced as the winner and she was totally shocked….‘but those other girls were so pretty’….little did Laura know that she had outshone the rest, she’d continued to smile and looked excited and engrossed in all that was happening around her and looked totally radiant! Laura stood up and was crowned along with her attendants. She would now represent her town at a multitude of carnivals for a year and also had the chance of competing in Miss UK Carnival Queen in Euro Disney. She’d won £75 and would be having a dress made especially for her, to her liking! All along though, no-one had had an inkling that this child was actually profoundly deaf and had been that way since birth!

On Laura’s eight-week old check I had voiced my suspicions. I hadn’t had an easy birth and the first few weeks had been hell. This had caused umpteen arguments, yet the baby didn’t flinch when doors were slammed and voices were raised. The midwife dismissed our concerns, after all this was a first baby, what did we know! Laura was a happy and very alert child, she managed to convince others that there wasn’t a problem. She turned when people walked into the room and gurgled happily. Finally we got to her eight-month check and she failed! ‘An easily distracted child’, we were told. She failed her second check too for being ‘far too engrossed in what’s happening around her’. We then asked our new GP to forward her to a specialist, and at 11 months after an audiologist, Tony Corcoran, visited us very late one night, we had a diagnosis….she was profoundly deaf.

Even though I’d suspected there was a problem, to have it confirmed at being so ‘final’ was an amazing shock. We questioned, do we get a second opinion? Could it be wrong? I remember both Pete and I spending the entire night and next day crying. The guilt was crippling, we had brought this child into the world and through our doing she would constantly struggle through life. Would she be able to communicate? Would she have an independent life? Would she be bullied and ridiculed? To add salt to the wound we were both musicians – she would miss out on so much! It didn’t help that my own senior school had had a unit attached for hearing impaired children. They were segregated, looked strange because they were always wearing so much equipment, and seemed to generally be in the lower attainment classes. It looked like this would be my own child’s future!

Telling others was even harder, seeing the sympathetic looks, the shock, the not knowing what to say. Everyone had said to us ‘don’t worry, I know someone who had problems, it was only glue ear and they are fine now’. This wasn’t going to go away though, there was no miracle cure! I struggled to come to terms with the diagnosis and was put onto anti-depressants, only to discover that I was in fact pregnant again. This made me have to pull myself together!

We were quickly put in contact with a teacher of the deaf and Laura’s first ear mould test for hearing aids was made. Another struggle! Try getting an 11 month-old baby to accept something in and on their ears. I’d heard nightmare stories of hearing aids being flushed down loo’s, buried in gardens, eaten by the dog etc, all I was trying to do was get her to wear them so that hopefully she could hear something.

The teacher of the deaf, Shirley Shaw had made an appointment for us to go with Laura to the local unit that catered for the pre-school hearing impaired children. I walked in and saw these tiny children struggling so hard to communicate, playing a game where they jumped when they heard the sound of the drum. Even though the drum was loud some were still missing their cue. This was the struggle my baby would have. I couldn’t suppress any longer and left the room with tears streaming down my face.

I was followed out by one of the teachers and coaxed into a room where they had some older children, and was introduced to a little girl called Gemma. She was bright, cheerful and very pretty and I could understand what she was saying; this little seven year-old gave us hope.

Laura attended a specialist nursery unit just after her third birthday, and after she had just been fitted with a cochlear implant, a fairly new electronic implanted hearing device. She was picked up in the school taxi with the other hearing impaired children that attended the unit at 7.30am and driven to school ten miles away. Those first few days were awful…we couldn’t explain to her why and where she was going. We’d tried explaining things with photographs, but the look on her face was heartbreaking. Why was mummy and her baby brother Daniel not coming with her? Luckily she settled quickly and was soon having fun.

Everyday tasks were still a nightmare – trying to watch and keep a toddler safe with a newborn baby as well, who do you go to first?! Many a time in the local supermarket I’d want to scream at some stupid busy body who was giving me disdainful looks because I wasn’t stopping my toddler from doing something by shouting at them – I was doing the best I could, and those looks hurt! I’d want to spit at them, ‘she’s deaf’ just to embarrass them, and for them to have an inkling of the pain I was feeling. I was still struggling when I would walk past carol singers at Christmas, all the other children would stop and be engrossed and Laura just walked past. There were also all the times in the local shopping centre where Laura had managed to break free of her reigns and I would have to abandon the baby and chase the toddler – a great game to the child, a nightmare for me!

From when Laura’s implant was switched on though, her development was rapid. At three years I was delighted that she had 20 words I understood, I thought she was doing really well – now with the implant she seemed to double that weekly. Soon I lost track and double and triple syllable words were coming, the progress was amazing – helped of course by having her younger brother hot on her toes, she didn’t want to miss out on anything to him!

Laura spent four years making that trip to the hearing unit in Poole. The staff had years of experience with dealing with hearing impaired children and had high expectations of what they could achieve and got tremendous results. They used a hard yet fair approach, no ‘poor little deaf child’, they were preparing them for independence and the outside world!

By year three, Laura was ready to mainstream into a local school with support. I needed a school that would nourish and protect both of my children. After a lot of searching I found a small school that welcomed them both, St Catherine’s Catholic Primary School in Colehill. Both of the children settled on their first day and totally flourished. I just felt from my first visit that the school would be right for them and I knew that my children would also be a credit to the school. Everyone warmed to Laura, her personality just shone. Everyone wanted and naturally gave her 110%.

Laura left St Catherine’s leaving her mark (including a signed version of Ava Maria that she taught the school). Laura achieved above average in her year six SAT exams and is currently finishing year ten in her secondary school, St Peters in Bournemouth. She’s in the middle of the coursework for ten GCSEs and is looking at going into social work. Her year ten work experience has been in a nursery school, Busy Bee's in West Moors and in a local special needs school, Montecute School. Laura feels that she’s lucky that she has a normal independent life and wants to work and help people who are less fortunate.

For the last five years Laura and Daniel have both come with me to the Delta Summer School, a school that supports parents with newly-diagnosed hearing impaired children. I feel that now it is Laura that is hopefully giving the inspiration to those parents that I so desperately needed in those early days. For years she’s spoken to parents about her experiences and about her implant at social events with the Dorset Deaf Children’s Society. Delta and the Southampton Cochlear Implant Center and been on-hand with her brother to look after the younger children so that parents have the opportunity to chat and compare notes with each other. These events can so help the parents realise that they are not alone and that there’s always someone on hand to share their concerns with.

So Laura….Carnival Queen! So positive for any parent with a special needs child, so positive for other children, to realise that they don't have to be treated differently. So positive for the implant team and such a reward for all those countless people who have loved and helped her get to where she is today – a totally independent, bright, loving and lovable young lady! Well done Laura, we are so very proud of you.

Laura now attends carnivals representing Ferndown and in January '09, will go to Disneyland Paris as the UK Carnival Queen to participate in its Carnival Queen Event.

She recently attended the liberal conference in Bournemouth with Ian Noon from the NDCS, supporting its 'bridging the gap' campaign.