Emily's-

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Emily and her partner Luke planned the pregnancy after being together for 2 years. Emily was 19 and Luke was 22 when Grace was born.

The 3 of them live together with their pet turtle. Grace has some serious health conditions that require lots of hospital trips. Luke works long hours, but they get lots of support from their wider family.

They like to go on caravan holidays and for fun days out together. Grace is a cheerleader for Leeds Rhinos.

Grace: My favourite thing to do with mummy and daddy is go to Ninja Warrior. And the park.

Emily: Me, her and her dad went to Ninja Warrior. Her dad gets a bit awkward cause he’s got anxiety… Whereas I’ll go on the slides with her [laughs] and slide down… and run about like a little kid with her [laughs].

Grace: You’re a good mummy! When mummy can drive we’re gonna go to the beach! And my Daddy!

Emily: “Even if you’re young you can still be a good mum and take them places and kind of let them express themselves no matter what age you are as a parent.

We can do it, even if your child has a disability or even if your child has needs. Or even if your child’s just a normal typical child we can still be successful and we can still be good parents.

I don’t really have much confidence in myself so I find it hard to like compliment myself. But I’m proud that, just seeing her face when we’re going places, it makes me proud that she’s happy. And I, like even though I don’t feel confident that I’m a good mum, knowing that Grace is happy and seeing her happy knows that I must be doing something right.”

“I was working in a nursery and I ended up having to go on sick. And then my contract was up so then I couldn’t work any more. Because I was so unwell in my pregnancy that I just, I was in bed constantly. It was awful [laughs]. And then I ended up like getting really depressed from it because I were used to, like I went to school and then I was at college. And then when I left college I got a job and worked in the nursery and then I was just like stuck at home. And the after that I just kind of had a baby so it was like… all about me and then I ended up being stuck in with this baby and it was just, it was crazy. I remember just feeling so low because I didn’t, I’d barely seen any a’ my friends either after that. It’s like really life changing at first I think.”

“We go to farms and soft play in the holidays because I feel like when they’re at school, so Grace struggles. She struggles with the transition of coming to school and settling in because she struggles with the learning. And so…she’s basically under a paediatrician and stuff. There’s quite a lot of health conditions and like learning delays and development delays. So I feel like when she’s at school she kinda masks all her emotions.

So when we go to places like that she kind of lets free a little bit and I just think it’s nice for her to just let go of her emotions sometimes” .

Emily: We like going to the caravan. We go Scotland, Wales. But I think we sometimes go to Butlins as well you know with the l'apartments there. Cause they had Mr Tumble there last time didn’t they?

Grace: I like Mr Tumble!

Emily: So we went to the parks and shopping and they do like entertainment, you know on the camp site. So we were doing stuff like that and swimming, riding bikes. All sorts, stuff like that.

“She needs open heart surgery. And I was heartbroken, I couldn’t stop crying. After that, my depression then went downhill again. Like it’s kind of fluctuated since having Grace but I feel like it’s made me stronger… having Grace there to keep me going sorta thing.

I feel like it’s just normal now for her going to hospital because we’ve been so many times [laughs]. But it’s just when, like on certain appointments and they tell you certain things if something’s got worse then it can be a bit overwhelming then. ”