As a disabled person I’m used to fighting for my needs. Obviously, I didn’t enjoy having to repeatedly explain what a guide dog is or that yes, blind people can use stairs.

In the end my birth was a positive experience. I laboured in water, I had minimal interventions and even cut my own cord. What was really empowering for me about pregnancy and giving birth was feeling proud of my body and being able to celebrate it. My body has so often been labelled as broken or imperfect, labels I have to battle not to internalise. Yet I created this tiny incredible human.

I don’t need to see to love my child. Motherhood is beautifully and intensely sensory, from the early days of morning sickness to those first fluttery movements and eventually the exhausting ‘get this out of me’ aches. Of course, everyone is familiar with the delicious and terrible smells of a new baby, but I really pay attention to these physical experiences. There is nothing like the tactile warmth of cuddles and feeling of perfectly soft skin. Or the sounds of crying your soul aches to fix, and the magic of the giggles that you want to listen to forever.

I still encounter surprise and shock that I’m blind and a parent. I recently had a waitress ask with genuine confusion “is that your baby?” when I was in the middle of breastfeeding. I try to ignore these comments but find I do feel the weight of them on me, especially on those hard, exhausting days. So I try to embrace that pride I felt when the final push delivered him into the world and my arms. I whisper to him again: “I’m your mummy.” Then I tell a world still not ready to hear it that I’m an excellent mum, and I just happen to be blind.

The raw truth of being a blind mother: “I don’t need to see to love my child”