Imogen



Immi playing with Henry

Henry has a three year old sister. Before Henry was born, I worried about how she would be affected by the introduction of a new member to our family. I worried that our special mother-daughter bond could be compromised or at least changed forever. As an only child, Imogen was naturally our only focus. William and I could talk for hours about small things she had done through the day. I worried that she would become ‘lost’ as just another one of our children. However our fears, although natural, turned out to be unfounded. I have learnt that my love as a mother is not a finite quantity that I need to divvy out. Instead, the joy that Henry has brought to the family seems to have created even more love, within our family and for each of our children. In relation to Imogen, since Henry was born she has welcomed him with love and acceptance, regarding him almost reverently as her special little companion in life.

As Henry’s hearing problems began to become apparent, I was conscious again of the effect all this would have on Imogen. I need to balance teaching her to be loving, considerate and even protective of her brother, without requiring her to ‘look after’ him. She should not feel a sense of duty towards Henry, but rather just love and care for him, like she would any other sibling.

The bond between Imogen and Henry is already incredibly strong and sometime I get a glimpse of the future, when we as parents will be relegated in importance, and the friendship and love between Imogen and Henry will just grow stronger as they share life experiences and grow into young adults and beyond.

Imogen knows that Henry wears hearing aids of course (she calls them his ‘phonaks’), but we have not made a big deal about them, and she just assumes that all babies have them. We have a box in her room where I put clothes that Henry has grown out of, so that I can pass them onto another younger baby that we know. When Henry got new molds for his hearing aids recently, I explained to Imogen that Henry had outgrown his old ones; “we will have to give them to Bayden then, won’t we mummy?” I just let it go, all too soon she will be well aware of her brother’s ‘difference’.

A few times Henry has managed to pull his hearing aids out and when I have not been there to intervene, she has naturally and instinctively grabbed them out of his hands before he could put them in his mouth and immediately ran with them to me. I know some mothers would be nervous about leaving their three year old and ten month old playing together, but this is the only way I will actually leave Henry alone. I don’t leave him playing by himself in case he does pull his hearing aids out and choke on them (every time I have had a close call, I always imagine how tragic it would be for a baby to die choking on his hearing aids). Yet when Imogen is with him, I am happy to duck out of the room for a few minutes because I know that if he pulls them out she will intervene- she has learnt to recognise the sound of the buzz of the aids as soon as they are disconnected from his ears and quickly responds. The moment that stands out most clearly for me is driving from Sydney to Woollongong by myself with both kids in the back, Henry in a rear facing car seat, so I couldn’t see him. For some reason he had his hearing aids in- now in the car I usually take them out- maybe after this incident! Anyway, we had just turned onto the freeway and I was in the third (centre) lane doing 110km/hr. Next thing I know, Imogen (then not yet three years old) said to me ‘Mummy! Henry is eating his phonaks!!’. I remember the fear, the pit in my stomach, the slow panic that gripped me. I wasn’t in a position to pull over the car, so all I could do was lean back and undo Imogen’s car seat buckle while keeping my eyes on the road. Without needing to be told what to do, she jumped out of her seat, pulled the hearing aids out of Henry’s mouth, handed them to me and then hopped back into her car seat. I was so proud of her maturity in that moment.

Imogen and Henry under the Christmas Tree