A mother shares the heartbreaking moment she was holding her newborn son when she lost her vision.
Mum Sarah Hocking, 28, from Bendigo, Victoria, was confronted the frightening reality she might never look at her son, Archer again after she underwent a seven-hour brain surgery to remove a tumour from her optic nerve, just nine days after giving birth.
“A mask was put over my face”¦my lights went out and that was my last coloured memory,” she said.
Sarah is now blind after most of her vision were lost due to the operation, although she can still make out some blurred objects.
On her blog, Blind Intuition, she described how she had cherished every second with Archer before her life-changing surgery.
She said: “I remember every conversation, every visitor, the pure euphoria I felt holding my baby for the first time.
“The sleep deprivation, but wanting to stay awake just to stare at Archer, and take in the shape of his little lips, his wrinkly grandpa forehead, his deep blue eyes…the colour of his skin.”
A year after Archer’s birth, Sarah wrote another special blog written on her son’s birthday and recounted how blessed she felt to be his mother.
She said: “I may not be able to see the colour of Archer’s eyes, or the finer details in life, but I can see enough to see his face light up when I am up close, I can hear his infectious laugh and giggles, I saw the first time he rolled over, the first time he crawled, sat up and took his first steps.”
She said that she has been learning to live life “” and care for her baby “” with only a little bit of vision. “It’s kind of like looking through a stocking or at an overexposed photograph,” she said.
Since the operation, Sarah said she saw her son’s face again when he was 10 weeks old. She was changing his nappy at 4am under the bathroom’s bright lights. “I got down really close to him to give him a kiss and I saw his smile. I was so excited, I screamed and woke the whole house,” she said.
As Sarah and her husband, Cameron celebrate their son’s first birthday, they reflect on things that have happened to their family.
“I was teary actually because it was so overwhelming but I was also proud. We have achieved so much. At the end of the day, I’m still here.
“We have raised our beautiful little baby boy and Cam has got his business. So everything that we imagined before “¦ is still the same, it has just happened in a different way,” Sarah said.
Sources: Dailymail.co.uk and Kidspot.com.au
