Parent power

Sabina Iqbal has won awards for empowering Deaf parents. She says every barrier can be overcome

As a Deaf parent, accessing services was the biggest barrier. Fortunately, several years before I first became pregnant, I had founded Deaf Parenting UK, which aims to empower and support Deaf parents in accessing information and services.

Two years later, I wrote Pregnancy and Birth – a Guide for Deaf Women*, the first book in the world to be targeted towards Deaf parents.

While researching the book, I met many Deaf parents, and this helped a lot when I became pregnant myself.

As a result, I was more confident in approaching health professionals and exercising my right to have a British Sign Language (BSL)-interpreter at my antenatal appointments.

My husband, Asif, is also a Deaf BSL-user, so I felt it was vital to have an interpreter at the birth to enable him to communicate with the staff in case anything happened. The birthing centre was very supportive and Deaf aware, mostly because I made an extra effort to meet them before the labour. I explained my needs, and gave my midwife a copy of my book.

We use BSL at home with Samaira (left), while our families use Urdu and English. Being tri-lingual could be confusing for her (she is hearing) so we thought it was vital for her to start nursery early (at ten months) to help her language development.

Unfortunately, social services refused to help with funding as they said she was managing well, so we paid for her to attend nursery, and our instinct was right – her language development soared, and she loves it.

The staff were fantastic. We were their first Deaf parents and some of them are learning BSL. We are now introducing Areeb (eight months old, above right) to the nursery.

As Samaira (now two-and-a-half) has no sense of danger, particularly around road safety, we use a wrist strap when we go for a walk. At times, she wriggles free and it sometimes takes a few seconds to realise she has gone. To her it is a funny game, but for us it can be stressful.

Being Deaf, we cannot hear our babies cry, but we tune in visually, seeing if they are upset, happy, sad or tired, and that usually works, although it took time to get used to each baby.

We have two vibrating pagers, one for each baby, which tell us when each of them is crying (they also connect to the doorbell, telephone and fire alarm).

I understand there is a new pager which can be used for two babies, with different vibrating tones for each child.

While our experiences have been positive, this doesn’t mean we won’t encounter barriers in the future. But, so far, we have been able to interact with our children in a loving, stable environment.

* Published by Forest Books and available at £14.99 from www.forestbooks.com