Eimear Coffey

And I had my beautiful little Ollie in 2018.

And...

Ollie, I left Hollis Street, you know, Ollie was perfect, what I thought and everything was fine and headed off and it was a dream come true to have Ollie and we had planned him and then at around, of course, early childhood care and education is my background.

So at three to four months, I noticed he wasn't fixing and following, you know, with his eyesight.

And I just noticed a few little things with his development.

That's my background.

I know kids well, you know.

And basically, I kept bringing him to the public health nurse and things began to unfold about Ollie and his development and so on and so forth.

And I found out he was actually visually impaired.

And then at nine months old I spent ten, no eleven days in tele-hospital with him and that was shocking because all of a sudden Ollie had a team and it was a multi-disciplinary team and that Ollie was going to have disabilities that were going to affect his life.

You know, like he wasn't sitting up or you know holding a rattle or doing the things that babies do.

And that, that was January 2019 and that was just such a shock.

You know, I was just like, what?

You know, when the word disability, like I began to have panic attacks and I just was like, how, how has this happened?

Or like, how did we not know?

I was so confused.

How did we not know this from birth or, you know?

So, but Ollie is an absolute joy.

Like, he is the happiest little boy.

He's seven now.