An excerpt from We’ve Got This, Stories by Disabled Parents

In celebrating the launch of We’ve Got This - the first major anthology by parents with disabilities - we are delighted to share an edited expert from broadcaster, storyteller and regular Hireup op ed contributor, Jasper Peach.

Jasper joins twenty-four parents who identify as Deaf, disabled or chronically ill to discuss the highs and lows of parenthood. Edited by musician, writer and disability advocate Eliza Hull, their stories reveal that the greatest obstacles they face lie in other people’s attitudes. 

Sometimes I don’t think I’ve got this. I have nightmares where I’m underwater and my children are above the surface and I can’t seem to break through. The worst ones are when they are the ones drifting away, only they don’t know how to paddle up to the air, to the light and to safety. 

I’m forty now, but in my mid-twenties, during a perfect storm of stress and trauma, I got sick – and everything changed. After being promised that anti-inflammatories would fix it right up in a few days (spoiler alert: they just ate into the lining of my stomach), then going from GP to physiotherapist to rheumatologist, I was eventually diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and later chronic fatigue. 

Trying to explain what my diagnosis means for me is hard. Old mate Google tells me it’s ‘a rheumatic condition characterised by muscular or musculoskeletal pain with stiffness and localised tenderness at specific points on the body’. But that definition doesn’t describe how your friends disappear, or how you need to work out how to buy groceries when you can’t carry the bags anymore, not to mention how terrifying it is to have unpredictable symptoms such as brain fog and wildly fluctuating body temperature. 

The strangest part of having fibromyalgia is that I can do many things just like I always did, but a few hours later – or the next day, or weeks afterwards – my body lets me know it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad idea. And that’s the tip of the iceberg. 

After I got sick, I didn’t think being a mother was possible. I cast the idea of having kids aside. If I couldn’t really take care of myself properly, surely I couldn’t take care of a tiny baby? 

A few years into knowing one another, my partner, Tracey, turned to me and told me that having children was the meaning of her life. I was stunned – previously we’d always said that wasn’t for us. Me for health reasons, her for political and environmental ones. 

This became one of the defining moments of my life – realising that I could hold a belief and be certain it was true and then look into it and completely change my mind. The tide turned swiftly, and I bobbed along in the ripples that said, joyfully, I want babies and I want to make them as soon as possible. 

So we had our babies. 

There are times when it’s clear I’ve got this. 

I have instilled in our babies a love of fashion and celebrating our bodies. In our case, fashion could be a box on your head and a single sock. But we take time to appreciate the creativity involved in colour and garment combos. Both our kids have been sprung giving their reflections huge kisses in the mirror.

We value kindness, courage, trying, laughing and farts. Our kids insist on helping with anything and everything. They feel proud when they can do something independently, but they have also seen their mum confidently and consistently asking for help when needed. 

I’ve got this – because I am the most amazing couch snuggler and TV watcher. I love to cook for my family (my nearest and dearest know I’ve needed a family to cook for over the past few decades so it’s good I actually have one now). I talk to my kids about how it’s good to cook with natural wholefoods, but I’m also cool with a ‘that’ll do’ crinkly packet snack or squeezy yogurt pouch. One of my greatest joys is making apple boats for my kids. In summer we make icy poles from coconut milk and frozen fruit. 

I hope my kids know that love is stronger than a body, and that a body that is in pain can love them with the strength and ferocity of a king tide.

Yeah, I reckon I’ve got this.